Improving TCP performance in residential broadband networks

Abstract

ADSL and cable connections are the prevalent technologies available from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for residential Internet access. Asymmetric access technologies such as these offer high download capacity, but moderate upload capacity. When the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used on such access networks, performance degradation can occur. In particular, sharing a bottleneck link with different upstream and downstream capacities among competing TCP flows in opposite directions can degrade the throughput of the higher speed link. Despite many research efforts to solve this problem in the past, there is no solution that is both highly effective and easily deployable in residential networks. In this paper, we propose an Asymmetric Queueing (AQ) mechanism that enables full utilization of the bottleneck access link in residential networks with asymmetric capacities. The extensive simulation evaluation of our design shows its effectiveness and robustness in a variety of network conditions. Furthermore, our solution is easy to deploy and configure in residential networks.