TCP k-SACK: a simple protocol to improve performance over lossy links
TCP k-SACK: a simple protocol to improve performance over lossy links
Date
2001
Authors
Chrungoo, Abhay
Gupta, Vishu
Saran, Huzur
Shorey, Rajeev
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Abstract
We propose k-SACK, a TCP variant that has considerably improved throughput characteristics over lossy links. A k-SACK source does not consider every packet loss as an indication of congestion. It uses the selective acknowledgement option to estimate a parameter lookahead-loss, which is used in congestion detection. Our results demonstrate that k-SACK maintains a steady performance in a non-lossy environment while showing considerable performance improvement over paths spanning lossy links. Throughput gains of more than 90% are observed over links with packet loss rates of the order of 5%. We show that when k-SACK is used over wireline Internet links, it does not harm the existing TCP variants significantly. k-SACK is simple to implement and does not involve any additional overheads
Description
Keywords
TCP, Selective Acknowledgements (SACK), Wireless networks, Lossy links, Bandwidth utilization, Throughput, Fairness, Drop tail, Congestion