Transport layer Part III

 Principles of congestion control

 Learning that congestion is occurring
 Adapting to alleviate the congestion

 TCP congestion control

 Additive-increase, multiplicative-decrease
 Slow start and slow-start restart

1
 TCP flow control
application
application may process
remove data from application
TCP socket buffers ….
TCP socket OS
receiver buffers
… slower than TCP
receiver is delivering
(sender is sending) TCP
code

IP
flow control code
receiver controls sender, so
sender won’t overflow receiver’s
buffer by transmitting too much, from sender
too fast
receiver protocol stack

Transport Layer 3-2

 TCP flow control
 receiver “advertises” free buffer
space by including rwnd value in
TCP header of receiver-to-sender to application process
segments
 RcvBuffer size set via socket options
(typical default is 4096 bytes) RcvBuffer buffered data
 many operating systems autoadjust
RcvBuffer
rwnd free buffer space
 sender limits amount of unacked
(“in-flight”) data to receiver’s rwnd TCP segment payloads
value
receiver-side buffering
 guarantees receive buffer will not
overflow

Transport Layer 3-3

 Flow Control vs. Congestion Control
 Flow control
 Keeping one fast sender from overwhelming a slow receiver

 Congestion control
 Keep a set of senders from overloading the network
• E.g., persuade hosts to stop sending, or slow down
• Typically has notions of fairness (i.e., sharing the pain)

 Different concepts, but similar mechanisms

 TCP flow control: receiver window
 TCP congestion control: congestion window
 TCP window: min{congestion window, receiver window}
4
 Simple Congestion Detection
 Packet loss
 Packet gets dropped along the way

 Packet delay
 Packet experiences high delay

 How does TCP sender learn this?

 Loss
• Timeout
• Triple-duplicate acknowledgment
 Delay
• Round-trip time estimate

5
 Idea of TCP Congestion Control
 Each source determines the available capacity
 … so it knows how many packets to have in transit

 Congestion window
 Maximum # of unacknowledged bytes to have in transit
 MaxWindow = min{congestion window, receiver window}
 Send at the rate of the slowest component

 Adapting the congestion window

 Decrease upon losing a packet: backing off
 Increase upon success: optimistically exploring

6
 Additive Increase, Multiplicative Decrease
 How much to increase and decrease?
 Increase linearly, decrease multiplicatively
 Consequences of over-sized window are much worse than having
an under-sized window
• Over-sized window: packets dropped and retransmitted
• Under-sized window: somewhat lower throughput

 Multiplicative decrease
 On loss of packet, divide congestion window in half

 Additive increase
 On success for last window of data, increase linearly

7
 Leads to the TCP “Sawtooth”

Window

Loss

halved

8
 Practical Details
 Congestion window
 Represented in bytes, not in packets
 Packets have MSS (Maximum Segment Size) bytes

 Increasing the congestion window

 Increase by MSS on success for last window of data
 In practice, increase a fraction of MSS per received ACK
• # packets per window: CWND / MSS
• Increment per ACK: MSS * (MSS / CWND)

 Decreasing the congestion window

 Never drop congestion window below 1 MSS

9
 Getting Started
Need to start with a small CWND to avoid overloading the network.

Window

But, could take a long

time to get started! t
10
 “Slow Start” Phase
 Start with a small congestion window
 Initially, CWND is 1 MSS
 So, initial sending rate is MSS/RTT

 That could be pretty wasteful

 Might be much less than the actual bandwidth
 Linear increase takes a long time to accelerate

 Slow-start phase (really “fast start”)

 Sender starts at a slow rate (hence the name)
 … but increases the rate exponentially
 … until the first loss event
11
 Slow Start in Action
Double CWND per round-trip time

1 2 4 8
Src

D D D A A D D D D
A
A A A A

Dest

12
 Slow Start and the TCP Sawtooth
Window
Loss

Exponential “slow t
start”

13
 Two Kinds of Loss in TCP
 Triple duplicate ACK
 Packet n is lost, but packets n+1, n+2, etc. arrive
 Receiver sends duplicate acknowledgments
 … and the sender retransmits packet n quickly
 Do a multiplicative decrease and keep going

 Timeout
 Packet n is lost and detected via a timeout
• E.g., because all packets in flight were lost
 start over with a low CWND

14
 Repeating Slow Start After Timeout
Window
timeout

Slow start in operation

until it reaches half of
t cwnd.
previous

Slow-start restart: Go back to CWND of 1, but take advantage

of knowing the previous value of CWND.
15
Connection Management
before exchanging data, sender/receiver “handshake”:
 agree to establish connection (each knowing the other willing
to establish connection)
 agree on connection parameters

application application

connection state: ESTAB connection state: ESTAB

connection variables:
seq # client-to-server
server-to-client
rcvBuffer size
at server,client
connection Variables:
seq # client-to-server
server-to-client
rcvBuffer size
at server,client

network network

Transport Layer 3-16

 TCP 3-way handshake

client state server state

LISTEN
choose init seq num, x
send TCP SYN msg
SYNSENT
received SYNACK(x)
ESTAB indicates server is live;
send ACK for SYNACK;
this segment may contain
client-to-server data
LISTEN
SYNbit=1, Seq=x
choose init seq num, y
send TCP SYNACK
msg, acking SYN SYN RCVD
SYNbit=1, Seq=y
ACKbit=1; ACKnum=x+1
ACKbit=1, ACKnum=y+1
received ACK(y)
indicates client is live
ESTAB

Transport Layer 3-17

TCP: closing a connection
 client, server each close their side of connection
 send TCP segment with FIN bit = 1
 respond to received FIN with ACK
 on receiving FIN, ACK can be combined with own FIN
 simultaneous FIN exchanges can be handled

Transport Layer 3-18

TCP: closing a connection
client state server state
ESTAB ESTAB
clientSocket.close()
FIN_WAIT_1 can no longer FINbit=1, seq=x
send but can
receive data CLOSE_WAIT
ACKbit=1; ACKnum=x+1
can still
FIN_WAIT_2 wait for server send data
close

LAST_ACK
FINbit=1, seq=y
TIMED_WAIT can no longer
send data
ACKbit=1; ACKnum=y+1
timed wait
for 2*max CLOSED
segment lifetime

CLOSED

Transport Layer 3-19

Chapter 3: summary
 principles behind transport layer services:
 multiplexing, demultiplexing
 reliable data transfer
 flow control
 congestion control
 instantiation, implementation in the Internet
 UDP
 TCP

Transport Layer 3-20