AuthorsB. R. Opstad, J. Markussen, I. Ahmed, A. Petlund, C. Griwodz and P. Halvorsen
TitleLatency and Fairness Trade-Off for Thin Streams Using Redundant Data Bundling in TCP
AfilliationCommunication Systems, Communication Systems
StatusPublished
Publication TypeProceedings, refereed
Year of Publication2015
Conference NameIEEE 40th Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN)
Pagination287-294
Date Published10/2015
PublisherIEEE
Place PublishedClearwater Beach, FL, USA
Keywordscommunication, latency, networks, thin streams
Abstract

Time-dependent applications using TCP often send thin-stream traffic, characterised by small packets and high inter-transmission-times. Retransmissions after packet loss can result in very high delays for such flows as they often cannot trigger fast retransmit. Redundant Data Bundling is a mechanism that preempts the experience of loss for a flow by piggybacking unacknowledged segments with new data as long as the total packet size is lower than the flow maximum segment size. Although successful at reducing retransmission latency, this mechanism had design issues leaving it open for abuse, effectively making it unsuitable for general Internet deployment. In this paper, we have redesigned the RDB mechanism to make it safe for deployment. We improve the trigger for when to apply it and evaluate its fairness towards competing traffic. Extensive experimental results confirm that our proposed modifications allows for inter-flow fairness while maintaining the significant latency reductions from the original RDB mechanism.

DOI10.1109/LCN.2015.7366322
Citation Key23716