Throughput Optimization in TCP with a Performance Enhancing Proxy

To improve TCP throughput performance, a method using a PEP (Performance Enhancing Proxy) has been proposed. The PEP operates on a router along a TCP connection. When a data packet arrives at the PEP, it forwards the packet to the destination host, transmits the corresponding ACK (premature ACK) to the source host in behalf of the destination host, and stores a copy of the packet into its own buffer (PEP buffer) in case retransmission of the packet is required. As a congestion control method on the PEP, a method which keeps the number of prematurely acknowledged packets in the PEP buffer below a threshold (watermark) value has been proposed. However, the relation between the watermark value and throughput is not sufficiently investigated, and an optimization method of the watermark value is not proposed. In this paper, we first investigate the relation between the watermark value and the average throughput. Extensive simulations show that the simulation results are roughly classified into two cases. In the first case, the average throughput becomes larger for larger watermark values and becomes a constant value when the watermark is over a certain value. In the second case, although the average throughput becomes larger for larger watermark values in the same way, it decreases when the watermark is over a certain value. Next, based on the results about the relation, we propose an watermark optimization algorithm which can adaptively maximize the average throughput of each connection and also satisfy a fairness condition that the average throughputs of connections are equal to each other.