Explicit Congestion Control Algorithms for Time Varying Capacity Media

Explicit congestion control (XCC) is emerging as one potential solution for overcoming limitations inherent to the current TCP algorithm, characterized by unstable throughput, high queuing delay, RTT-limited fairness, and a static dynamic range that does not scale well to high bandwidth delay product networks. In XCC, routers provide multibit feedback to sources, which, in turn, adapt throughput more accurately to the path bandwidth with potentially faster convergence times. Such systems, however, require precise knowledge of link capacity for efficient operation. In the presence of variable-capacity media, e.g., 802.11, such information is not entirely obvious or may be difficult to extract. We explore three possible algorithms for XCC which retain efficiency under such conditions by inferring available bandwidth from queue dynamics and test them through simulations with two relevant XCC protocols: XCP and RCP. Additionally, preliminary results from an experimental implementation based on XCP are presented. Finally, we compare our proposals with TCP and show how such algorithms outperform it in terms of efficiency, stability, queuing delay, and flow-rate fairness.