TCP congestion control

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) uses a network congestion-avoidance algorithm that includes various aspects of an additive increase/multiplicative decrease (AIMD) scheme, with other schemes such as slow-start and congestion window to achieve congestion avoidance. The TCP congestion-avoidance algorithm is the primary basis for congestion control in the Internet.^{[1][2][3][4][5]} There are several variations and versions of the algorithm implemented and in use on the internet.

Operation

To avoid congestive collapse, TCP uses a multi-faceted congestion-control strategy. For each connection, TCP maintains a congestion window, limiting the total number of unacknowledged packets that may be in transit end-to-end. This is somewhat analogous to TCP's sliding window used for flow control. TCP uses a mechanism called slow start^[6] to increase the congestion window after a connection is initialized or after a timeout. It starts with a window of two times the maximum segment size (MSS). Although the initial rate is low, the rate of increase is very rapid; for every packet acknowledged, the congestion window increases by 1 MSS so that the congestion window effectively doubles for every round-trip time (RTT).

When the congestion window exceeds the ssthresh threshold, the algorithm enters a new state, called congestion avoidance. In some implementations (e.g., Linux), the initial ssthresh is large, and so the first slow start usually ends after a loss. However, ssthresh is updated at the end of each slow start, and will often affect subsequent slow starts triggered by timeouts. In congestion avoidance state as long as non-duplicate ACKs are received, the congestion window is additively increased by one MSS every round-trip time. When a packet is lost, the likelihood of duplicate ACKs being received is very high.^{[lower-alpha 1]}

Congestion window

In TCP, the congestion window is one of the factors that determines the number of bytes that can be outstanding at any time. The congestion window is maintained by the sender. Note that this is not to be confused with the TCP window size which is maintained by the receiver. The congestion window is a means of stopping a link between the sender and the receiver from becoming overloaded with too much traffic. It is calculated by estimating how much congestion there is on the link.

When a connection is set up, the congestion window, a value maintained independently at each host, is set to a small multiple of the MSS allowed on that connection. Further variance in the congestion window is dictated by an AIMD approach. This means that if all segments are received and the acknowledgments reach the sender on time, some constant is added to the window size. The window keeps growing exponentially until a timeout occurs or the receiver reaches its limit (a threshold value "ssthresh"). If the sender reaches this threshold, the congestion window increases linearly at the rate of 1/(congestion window) segment on each new acknowledgement received.

On timeout:

1. Congestion window is reset to 1 MSS.
2. "ssthresh" is set to half the congestion window size before segment loss started.
3. "slow start" is initiated.

A system administrator may adjust the maximum window size limit, or adjust the constant added during additive increase, as part of TCP tuning.

The flow of data over a TCP connection is also controlled by the use of the receiver advertised TCP Receive Window. By comparing its own congestion window with the receive window of the receiver, a sender can determine how much data it may send at any given time.

Slow start

Slow-start is part of the congestion control strategy used by TCP, the data transmission protocol used by many Internet applications. Slow-start is used in conjunction with other algorithms to avoid sending more data than the network is capable of transmitting, that is, to avoid causing network congestion. The algorithm is specified by RFC 5681.

Slow-start begins initially with a congestion window size (cwnd) of 1, 2 or 10.^[7] The value of the Congestion Window will be increased by one with each acknowledgement (ACK) received, effectively doubling the window size each round-trip time ("although it is not exactly exponential because the receiver may delay its ACKs, typically sending one ACK for every two segments that it receives"^[8]). The transmission rate will be increased with slow-start algorithm until either a loss is detected, or the receiver's advertised window (rwnd) is the limiting factor, or the slow start threshold (ssthresh) is reached. If a loss event occurs, TCP assumes that it is due to network congestion and takes steps to reduce the offered load on the network. These measurements depend on the used TCP congestion avoidance algorithm. Once ssthresh is reached, TCP changes from slow-start algorithm to the linear growth (congestion avoidance) algorithm. At this point, the window is increased by 1 segment for each RTT.

Although the strategy is referred to as "Slow-Start", its congestion window growth is quite aggressive, more aggressive than the congestion avoidance phase.^[9] Before slow-start was introduced in TCP, the initial pre-congestion avoidance phase was even faster.

The behavior upon packet loss depends on the TCP congestion avoidance algorithm that is used.

TCP Tahoe

In TCP Tahoe, when a loss occurs, fast retransmit is sent, half of the current CWND is saved as a Slow Start Threshold (SSThresh) and slow start begins again from its initial CWND. Once the CWND reaches the SSThresh, TCP changes to congestion avoidance algorithm where each new ACK increases the CWND by SS + SS / CWND. This results in a linear increase of the CWND.

TCP Reno

TCP Reno implements an algorithm called Fast recovery. A fast retransmit is sent, half of the current CWND is saved as SSThresh and as new CWND, thus skipping slow start and going directly to Congestion Avoidance algorithm

Slow start assumes that unacknowledged segments are due to network congestion. While this is an acceptable assumption for many networks, segments may be lost for other reasons, such as poor data link layer transmission quality. Thus, slow start can perform poorly in situations with poor reception, such as wireless networks.

The slow start protocol performs badly for short-lived connections. Older web browsers would create many consecutive short-lived connections to the web server, and would open and close the connection for each file requested. This kept most connections in the slow start mode, which resulted in poor response time. To avoid this problem, modern browsers either open multiple connections simultaneously or reuse one connection for all files requested from a particular web server. However, connections cannot be reused for the multiple third-party servers used by web sites to implement web advertising, sharing features of social networking services,^[10] and counter scripts of web analytics.

Additive increase/multiplicative decrease

The additive increase/multiplicative decrease (AIMD) algorithm is a feedback control algorithm. AIMD combines linear growth of the congestion window with an exponential reduction when a congestion takes place. Multiple flows using AIMD congestion control will eventually converge to use equal amounts of a contended link.^[11]

Fast retransmit

Fast Retransmit is an enhancement to TCP which reduces the time a sender waits before retransmitting a lost segment.

A TCP sender uses a timer to recognize lost segments. If an acknowledgement is not received for a particular segment within a specified time (a function of the estimated round-trip delay time), the sender will assume the segment was lost in the network, and will retransmit the segment.

Duplicate acknowledgement is the basis for the fast retransmit mechanism which works as follows: after receiving a packet (e.g. with sequence number 1), the receiver sends an acknowledgement by adding 1 to the sequence number (i.e., acknowledgement number 2) which means that the receiver received the packet number 1 and it expects packet number 2 from the sender. Let's assume that three subsequent packets have been lost. In the meantime the receiver receives packet numbers 5 and 6. After receiving packet number 5, the receiver sends an acknowledgement, but still only for sequence number 2. When the receiver receives packet number 6, it sends yet another acknowledgement value of 2. Because the sender receives more than one acknowledgement with the same sequence number (2 in this example) this is called duplicate acknowledgement.

The fast retransmit enhancement works as follows: if a TCP sender receives a specified number of acknowledgements which is usually set to three duplicate acknowledgements with the same acknowledge number (that is, a total of four acknowledgements with the same acknowledgement number), the sender can be reasonably confident that the segment with the next higher sequence number was dropped, and will not arrive out of order. The sender will then retransmit the packet that was presumed dropped before waiting for its timeout.

Algorithms

The "TCP Foo" names for the algorithms appear to have originated in a 1996 paper by Kevin Fall and Sally Floyd.^[12]

The following is one possible classification according to the following properties:

1. the type and amount of feedback received from the network
2. incremental deployability on the current Internet
3. the aspect of performance it aims to improve: high bandwidth-delay product networks (B); lossy links (L); fairness (F); advantage to short flows (S); variable-rate links (V); speed of convergence (C)
4. the fairness criterion it uses

Some well-known congestion avoidance mechanisms are classified by this scheme as follows:

Variant	Feedback	Required changes	Benefits	Fairness
(New)Reno	Loss	-	-	Delay
Vegas	Delay	Sender	Less loss	Proportional
High Speed	Loss	Sender	High bandwidth
BIC	Loss	Sender	High bandwidth
CUBIC	Loss	Sender	High bandwidth
H-TCP	Loss	Sender	High bandwidth
FAST	Delay	Sender	High bandwidth	Proportional
Compound TCP	Loss/Delay	Sender	High bandwidth	Proportional
Westwood	Loss/Delay	Sender	L
Jersey	Loss/Delay	Sender	L
CLAMP	Multi-bit signal	Receiver, Routers	V	Max-min
TFRC	Loss	Sender, Receiver	No Retransmission	Minimum delay
XCP	Multi-bit signal	Sender, Receiver, Router	BLFC	Max-min
VCP	2-bit signal	Sender, Receiver, Router	BLF	Proportional
MaxNet	Multi-bit signal	Sender, Receiver, Router	BLFSC	Max-min
JetMax	Multi-bit signal	Sender, Receiver, Router	High bandwidth	Max-min
RED	Loss	Router	Smaller delay
ECN	Single-bit signal	Sender, Receiver, Router	Less loss

TCP Tahoe and Reno

The two algorithms were retrospectively named after the 4.3BSD operating system in which each first appeared (which were themselves named after Lake Tahoe and the nearby city of Reno, Nevada). The "Tahoe" algorithm first appeared in 4.3BSD-Tahoe (which was made to support the CCI Power 6/32 “Tahoe” minicomputer), and was made available to non-AT&T licensees as part of the “4.3BSD Networking Release 1”; this ensured its wide distribution and implementation. Improvements were made in 4.3BSD-Reno and subsequently released to the public as "Networking Release 2" and later 4.4BSD-Lite.

While both consider retransmission timeout (RTO) and duplicate ACKs as packet loss events, the behavior of Tahoe and Reno differ primarily in how they react to duplicate ACKs:

• Tahoe: If three duplicate ACKs are received (i.e. four ACKs acknowledging the same packet, which are not piggybacked on data and do not change the receiver's advertised window), Tahoe performs a fast retransmit, sets the slow start threshold to half of the current congestion window, reduces the congestion window to 1 MSS, and resets to slow start state.^[13]
• Reno: If three duplicate ACKs are received, Reno will perform a fast retransmit and skip the slow start phase by instead halving the congestion window (instead of setting it to 1 MSS like Tahoe), setting the slow start threshold equal to the new congestion window, and enter a phase called Fast Recovery.^[13]

In both Tahoe and Reno, if an ACK times out (RTO timeout), slow start is used, and both algorithms reduce congestion window to 1 MSS.

Fast Recovery (Reno only): In this state, TCP retransmits the missing packet that was signaled by three duplicate ACKs, and waits for an acknowledgment of the entire transmit window before returning to congestion avoidance. If there is no acknowledgment, TCP Reno experiences a timeout and enters the slow start state.

TCP Vegas

Until the mid-1990s, all of TCP's set timeouts and measured round-trip delays were based upon only the last transmitted packet in the transmit buffer. University of Arizona researchers Larry Peterson and Lawrence Brakmo introduced TCP Vegas, named after the largest Nevada city, in which timeouts were set and round-trip delays were measured for every packet in the transmit buffer. In addition, TCP Vegas uses additive increases in the congestion window. This variant was not widely deployed outside Peterson's laboratory. In a comparison study of various TCP congestion control algorithms, TCP Vegas appeared to be the smoothest followed by TCP CUBIC.^[14]

TCP Vegas was deployed as the default congestion control method for DD-WRT firmware v24 SP2.^[15]

TCP New Reno

TCP New Reno, defined by RFC 6582 (which obsoletes previous definitions in RFC 3782 and RFC 2582), improves retransmission during the fast-recovery phase of TCP Reno. During fast recovery, for every duplicate ACK that is returned to TCP New Reno, a new unsent packet from the end of the congestion window is sent, to keep the transmit window full. For every ACK that makes partial progress in the sequence space, the sender assumes that the ACK points to a new hole, and the next packet beyond the ACKed sequence number is sent.

Because the timeout timer is reset whenever there is progress in the transmit buffer, this allows New Reno to fill large holes, or multiple holes, in the sequence space – much like TCP SACK. Because New Reno can send new packets at the end of the congestion window during fast recovery, high throughput is maintained during the hole-filling process, even when there are multiple holes, of multiple packets each. When TCP enters fast recovery it records the highest outstanding unacknowledged packet sequence number. When this sequence number is acknowledged, TCP returns to the congestion avoidance state.

A problem occurs with New Reno when there are no packet losses but instead, packets are reordered by more than 3 packet sequence numbers. When this happens, New Reno mistakenly enters fast recovery, but when the reordered packet is delivered, ACK sequence-number progress occurs and from there until the end of fast recovery, every bit of sequence-number progress produces a duplicate and needless retransmission that is immediately ACKed.

New Reno performs as well as SACK at low packet error rates, and substantially outperforms Reno at high error rates.

TCP Hybla

TCP Hybla^[16] aims to eliminate penalization of TCP connections that incorporate a high-latency terrestrial or satellite radio link, due to their longer round-trip times. It stems from an analytical evaluation of the congestion window dynamics, which suggests the necessary modifications to remove the performance dependence on RTT.

TCP BIC

Binary Increase Congestion control is an implementation of TCP with an optimized congestion control algorithm for high speed networks with high latency (called LFN, long fat networks, in RFC 1072^[17]). BIC is used by default in Linux kernels 2.6.8 through 2.6.18.

TCP CUBIC

CUBIC is a less aggressive and more systematic derivative of BIC, in which the window is a cubic function of time since the last congestion event, with the inflection point set to the window prior to the event. CUBIC is used by default in Linux kernels from version 2.6.19.

Agile-SD TCP

Agile-SD is a Linux-based Congestion Control Algorithm (CCA) which is designed for the real Linux kernel. It is a receiver-side algorithm employs a loss-based approach using a novel mechanism, called Agility Factor (AF). It has been proposed by Mohamed A. Alrshah et al. to increase the bandwidth utilization over high-speed and short-distance networks (low-BDP networks) such as local area networks or fiber-optic network, especially when the applied buffer size is small. It has been evaluated by comparing its performance to Compound-TCP (the default CCA in MS Windows) and CUBIC (the default of Linux) using NS-2 simulator. It improves the total performance up to 55% in term of average throughput.

TCP Westwood+

Westwood+ is a sender-side only modification of the TCP Reno protocol stack that optimizes the performance of TCP congestion control over both wireline and wireless networks. TCP Westwood+ is based on end-to-end bandwidth estimation to set congestion window and slow start threshold after a congestion episode, that is, after three duplicate acknowledgments or a timeout. The bandwidth is estimated by properly low-pass filtering the rate of returning acknowledgment packets. The rationale of this strategy is simple: in contrast with TCP Reno, which blindly halves the congestion window after three duplicate ACKs, TCP Westwood+ adaptively sets a slow start threshold and a congestion window which takes into account the bandwidth used at the time congestion is experienced. TCP Westwood+ significantly increases throughput over wireless links and fairness compared to TCP Reno/New Reno in wired networks.

Compound TCP

Compound TCP is a Microsoft implementation of TCP which maintains two different congestion windows simultaneously, with the goal of achieving good performance on LFNs while not impairing fairness. It has been widely deployed in Windows versions since Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and has been ported to older Microsoft Windows versions as well as Linux.

TCP Proportional Rate Reduction

TCP Proportional Rate Reduction (PRR)^[18] is an algorithm designed to improve the accuracy of data sent during recovery. The algorithm ensures that the window size after recovery is as close as possible to the slow start threshold. In tests performed by Google, PRR resulted in a 3–10% reduction in average latency and recovery timeouts reduced by 5%.^[19] PRR is used by default in Linux kernels since version 3.2.^[20]

Other TCP congestion avoidance algorithms

• FAST TCP
• Generalized FAST TCP^[21]
• H-TCP
• Data Center TCP
• High Speed TCP
• HSTCP-LP^[22]
• TCP-Illinois
• TCP-LP^[22]
• TCP SACK
• Scalable TCP^[23]
• TCP Veno
• Westwood
• XCP^[24]
• YeAH-TCP^[25]
• TCP-FIT^[26]
• Congestion Avoidance with Normalized Interval of Time (CANIT)^[27]
• Non-linear neural network congestion control based on genetic algorithm for TCP/IP networks^[28]

TCP New Reno was the most commonly implemented algorithm, SACK support is very common and is an extension to Reno/New Reno. Most others are competing proposals which still need evaluation. Starting with 2.6.8 the Linux kernel switched the default implementation from New Reno to BIC. The default implementation was again changed to CUBIC in the 2.6.19 version. FreeBSD uses New Reno as the default algorithm. However, it supports a number of other choices.^[29]

When the per-flow product of bandwidth and latency increases, regardless of the queuing scheme, TCP becomes inefficient and prone to instability. This becomes increasingly important as the Internet evolves to incorporate very high-bandwidth optical links.

TCP Interactive (iTCP)^[30] allows applications to subscribe to TCP events and respond accordingly enabling various functional extensions to TCP from outside TCP layer. Most TCP congestion schemes work internally. iTCP additionally enables advanced applications to directly participate in congestion control such as to control the source generation rate.

Zeta-TCP detects the congestions from both the latency and loss rate measures, and applies different congestion window backoff strategies based on the likelihood of the congestions to maximize the goodput. It also has a couple of other improvements to accurately detect the packet losses, avoiding retransmission timeout retransmission; and accelerate/control the inbound (download) traffic.

Classification by network awareness

Congestion control algorithms can be categorized using network awareness as a criterion. The first category (”the box is black”) consists of a group of algorithms that consider the network as a black box, assuming no knowledge of its state, other than the binary feedback upon congestion. The second category (”the box is grey”) groups approaches that use measurements to estimate available bandwidth, level of contention or even the temporary characteristics of congestion. Due to the possibility of wrong estimations and measurements, the network is considered a grey box. The third category (”the box is green”) contains the bimodal congestion control, which calculates explicitly the fairshare, as well as the network-assisted control, where the network communicates its state to the transport layer; the box now is becoming green.^[31]

Black box

The Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD) algorithm is used to implement TCP window adjustments; based on the analysis of Chiu and Jain the algorithm achieves stability and converges to fairness in situations where the demand (of competing flows) exceeds the channel’s bandwidth. The congestion control in the traditional TCP, is based on the basic idea of AIMD. In TCP Tahoe, TCP NewReno and TCP SACK, the additive increase phase is adopted exactly as in AIMD, when the protocols are in the congestion avoidance phase. In case of a packet drop, instead of the multiplicative decrease a more conservative tactic is used in TCP-Tahoe. The congestion window resets and the protocol enters again the slow start phase. On the other hand, in TCP New Reno and TCP SACK, when the sender receives 3 DACKs, a multiplicative decrease is used in both window and slow start threshold. In such case, the protocols remain at the Congestion Avoidance phase. When the retransmission timeout expires, they enter the slow start phase as in TCP-Tahoe.

• Highspeed-TCP – Highspeed-TCP modifies the TCP response function in environments with large Delay-Bandwidth product and increase the congestion window more aggressively upon receiving an ACK and decreases the window more gently upon a loss event.^[32]
• BIC-TCP – Binary Increase Congestion Control Protocol (BIC-TCP) uses a concave increase of the sources rate after each congestion event until the window is equal to that before the event, in order to maximise the time that the network is fully utilised. After that, it probes aggressively.
• CUBIC TCP – CUBIC is a less aggressive and more systematic derivative of BIC, in which the window is a cubic function of time since the last congestion event, with the inflection point set to the window prior to the event.
• AIMD-FC – A recent improvement of AIMD, Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease with Fast Convergence (AIMD-FC) is not based on a new algorithm, but rather on an optimization of AIMD during the convergence procedure that enables the algorithm to converge faster and achieve higher efficiency.^[33]
• Binomial Mechanisms – Binomial Mechanisms form a new class of nonlinear congestion control algorithms named Binomial Congestion Control Algorithms. These algorithms are called binomial because their control is based on the involvement of two additional algebraic terms with different exponents.
• SIMD Protocol – SIMD is a TCP-friendly nonlinear congestion control algorithm that utilizes history information.
• GAIMD – General AIMD Congestion Control (GAIMD) generalizes AIMD congestion control by parameterizing the additive increase value α and multiplicative decrease ratio β.

Grey box

Standard TCP relies on packet losses as an implicit congestion signal from overloaded links. However, packet loss is not a sufficient indication of congestion, in its own right, for a number of reasons:

1. Packet loss can be caused by random bit corruption when bandwidth is still available.
2. Acknowledgement-based loss detection at the sender side can be affected by the cross-traffic on the reverse path.
3. Packet loss, as a binary feedback, cannot indicate the level of contention before the occurrence of congestion. Therefore, an efficient window adjustment tactic should reflect various network conditions, which cannot all be captured simply by packet drops. Several measurement-based transport protocols gather information on current network conditions.

• TCP Vegas – Vegas estimates the queuing delay, and linearly increases or decreases the window so that a constant number of packets per flow are queued in the network. Vegas implements proportional fairness.
• FAST TCP – FAST achieves the same equilibrium as Vegas, but uses proportional control instead of linear increase, and intentionally scales the gain down as the bandwidth increases with the aim of ensuring stability.
• TCP-Westwood – In TCP-Westwood (TCPW), a loss causes the window to be reset to the sender's estimate of the bandwidth-delay product, which is the smallest measured RTT times the observed rate of receiving ACKs.^[34]
• TFRC – TFRC is a TCP-Friendly, rate-based congestion control protocol, which intends to compete fairly for bandwidth with TCP flows.^[35]
• TCP-Real – TCP-Real employs a receiver-oriented and measurement-based congestion control mechanism that improves TCP performance over heterogeneous (wired/wireless) networks and over asymmetric paths.
• TCP-Jersey – TCP-Jersey is a new TCP scheme that focuses on the capability of the transport mechanism to distinguish the wireless from congestion packet losses.

Green box

• Bimodal Mechanism – Bimodal Congestion Avoidance and Control mechanism measures the fair-share of the total bandwidth that should be allocated for each flow, at any point, during the system’s execution.
• Signalling methods implemented by routers
  • Random Early Detection – Random Early Detection (RED) randomly drops packets in proportion to the router's queue size, triggering multiplicative decrease in some flows.
  • Explicit Congestion Notification – Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) enables routers to probabilistically mark a bit in the IP header, rather than drop the packet, to inform end-hosts of pending congestion when the length of the queue exceeds a threshold.
• Network-Assisted Congestion Control
  • VCP – The variable-structure congestion control protocol (VCP) uses two ECN bits to explicitly feedback the network state of congestion. It includes an end host side algorithm as well.

The following algorithms require custom fields to be added to the TCP packet structure:

• eXplicit Control Protocol (XCP) – XCP routers signal explicit increase and decreases in the senders' congestion windows.
• MaxNet – MaxNet uses a single header field, which carries the maximum congetsion level of any router on a flow's path. The rate is set as a function of this maximum congestion, resulting in max-min fairness.^[36]
• JetMax – JetMax, like MaxNet, also responds only to the maximum congestion signal, but also carries other overhead fields

Usage

• BIC is used by default in Linux kernels 2.6.8 through 2.6.18. (August 2004 – September 2006)
• CUBIC is used by default in Linux kernels since version 2.6.19. (November 2006)
• PRR is incorporated in Linux kernels to improve loss recovery since version 3.2. (January 2012)

See also

• Transmission Control Protocol §§ Congestion control​ and Development
• Network congestion § Mitigation
• Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN)
• Bufferbloat
• Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT)

Notes

References

Sources

• Kurose, James; Ross, Keith (2008). Computer Networking – A Top-Down Approach (4th ed.). Addison Wesley. ISBN 978-0-13-607967-5. 
• Afanasyev, A.; N. Tilley; P. Reiher; L. Kleinrock (2010). "Host-to-host congestion control for TCP" (PDF). IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials. 12 (3). 

External links

• Approaches to Congestion Control in Packet Networks (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-21 
• Papers in Congestion Control
• TCP Vegas Homepage
• Mark Allman, Vern Paxson, W. Richard Stevens (April 1999). "Fast Retransmit/Fast Recovery". TCP Congestion Control. IETF. sec. 3.2. RFC 2581. https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2581#section-3.2. Retrieved 2010-05-01. 
• TCP Congestion Handling and Congestion Avoidance Algorithms – The TCP/IP Guide