TCP Window Based Congestion Control -Slow-Start Approach

Abstract

Transmission control protocol (TCP) has undergone several transformations. Several proposals have been put forward to change the mechanisms of TCP congestion control to improve its performance. A line of research tends to reduce speed in the face of congestion thereby penalizing itself. In this group are the window based congestion control algorithms that use the size of congestion window to determine transmission speed. The two main algorithm of window based congestion control are the congestion avoidance and the slow start. The aim of this study is to survey the various modifications of window based congestion control. Much work has been done on congestion avoidance hence specific attention is placed on the slow start in order to motivate a new direction of research in network utility maximization. Mathematical modeling of the internet is discussed and proposals to improve TCP startup were reviewed. There are three lines of research on the improvement of slow start. A group uses the estimation of certain parameters to determine initial speed. The second group uses bandwidth estimation while the last group uses explicit request for network assistance to determine initial startup speed. The problems of each proposal are analyzed and a multiple startup for TCP is proposed. Multiple startups for TCP specify that startup speed is selectable from an n-arry set of algorithms. We then introduced the e-speed start which uses the prevailing network condition to determine a suitable starting speed.