Improving TCP performance in multipath packet forwarding networks

This paper investigates schemes to improve TCP performance in multipath forwarding networks. In multipath routing, packets to the same destination are sent to multiple next-hops in either packet-level or flow-level forwarding mode. Effective bandwidth is increased since we can utilize unused capacit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of communications and networks 2002-06, Vol.4 (2), p.148-157
Main Authors: Lee, Youngseok, Park, Ilkyu, Choi, Yanghee
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access methods and protocols, osi model
Applied sciences
Bandwidth
delayed ACK
Delays
Exact sciences and technology
fast retransmission
multipath
Out of order
Receivers
Routing
Routing protocols
TCP
Telecommunications
Telecommunications and information theory
Teleprocessing networks. Isdn
Throughput
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Summary:This paper investigates schemes to improve TCP performance in multipath forwarding networks. In multipath routing, packets to the same destination are sent to multiple next-hops in either packet-level or flow-level forwarding mode. Effective bandwidth is increased since we can utilize unused capacity of multiple paths to the destination. In packet-level multipath forwarding networks, TCP performance may not be enhanced due to frequent out-of-order segment arrivals at the receiver because of different delays among paths. To overcome this problem, we propose simple TCP modifications. At the sender, the fast retransmission threshold is adjusted taking the number of paths into consideration. At the receiver, the delayed acknowledgment scheme is modified such that an acknowledgment for an out-of-order segment arrival is delayed in the same way for the in-order one. The number of unnecessary retransmissions and congestion window reductions is diminished, which is verified by extensive simulations. In flow-level multipath forwarding networks, hashing is used at routers to select outgoing link of a packet. Here, we show by simulations that TCP performance is increased in proportion to the number of paths regardless of delay differences.
ISSN:1229-2370
1976-5541
DOI:10.1109/JCN.2002.6596897