Reducing web latency through TCP IW: Be smart

Abstract

Depending on the congestion level and the network characteristics (e.g., buffer sizes, capacity of the bottleneck, deployment scenario, etc.) a fixed Initial Window (IW) would be either too conservative or too aggressive. This results in low usage of the network resource or damaging high congestion level. This paper presents a sender-side only modification to the slow-start of TCP, SmartIW, that bypasses the limitations and potential issues of a fixed IW. The Round Trip Time (RTT) is estimated during the establishment of the connection and further exploited by SmartIW to pace the transmission of an adequate number of packets during the first RTT. Our simulation results show that, since the IW has been set in adequacy with the available network information, larger IW can be transmitted without increasing the congestion level of the network. SmartIW eventually reduces the RTT dependence of the slow start stage to fairly provide significant performance improvements whatever the network characteristics (RTT and congestion level).