On the existence of optimal LEDBAT parameters

The Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) protocol is a recently standardized protocol that aims to offer a scavenger service (i.e. the goal is to exploit the remaining and unused capacity of a link). LEDBAT is a delay-based protocol mainly defined by two parameters: a target queuing delay and a gain. The RFC 6817 provides guidelines to configure both parameters that strongly impact on the LEDBAT behavior in terms of fairness with other protocols. However, these guidelines are questioned by several studies as they might lead to the generation of a non-LBE (Less-than-Best-Effort) traffic. This paper explores the set of optimal parameters allowing LEDBAT protocol to effectively perform as an LBE traffic. We conclude that the optimal couple of target and decrease gain is (5 ms; 10). However, we observe that the aggregated use of optimized LEDBAT sources still disturb the overall traffic performance and that the exponential backoff is not an answer to this issue. As a result, we believe that additional strategies to limit the number of LEDBAT flows are required for integrating this protocol at a large scale.