Abstract

TCP uses an implicit feedback based window flow control mechanism. The window size is increased on receipt of an acknowledgement and decreased on detection of a packet loss. Thus a packet loss is used as an indication of congestion in the network. In the course of experiments conducted over the Internet, we have observed that packet losses can occur due to reasons other than congestion. In this paper, we use analysis and simulation to show that the current flow control scheme results in a significant drop in the throughput even if the likelihood of non congestion related loss is quite low. Based on our analysis we suggest a modification to the current scheme. Experimental results show that the modified scheme improves throughput significantly. Keyword Codes: C.2.2; I.6.4 Keywords: Network Protocols; Model Validation and Analysis 1. Introduction TCP [6] is the most commonly used transport protocol in the Internet. The congestion control algorithm currently embedded in the 4.3-Tahoe ...

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