Congestion Control

Connectionless flows

        how to define
        how to detect
        how to respond
        how much to overcapacity
        is data poisson or fractal?

Congestion control mechanisms I

        router-centric
                net layer deals with congestion
                routers drop packets and notify hosts
        host-centric
                end systems or processes notice behavior of net and adjust

accordingly

Congestion control mechanisms II

        Reservation-based
                request type of service from net
                admission control
                route preservation
        Feedback-based
                process adjusts to net feedback
                explicit by icmp
                implicit by behavior of net (packeteer)

Congestion control mechanisms III

        window-based
                (flow control versus congestion control)
                advertised receiver window
        rate based
                sender requests flow characteristics

Evaluation Criteria

        effective resource allocation
                increase throughput versus decrease delay
                power = throughput / delay
                poisson curve of power against load; max point at knee
        fairness
                equal share of bw
                proportinate share of bw according to need
                local vs long flows

Queuing Disciplines

        FIFO
        Fair queuing
        Weighted fair queuing
        policy mechanisms vs implementation strategies

TCP Congestion Control

        Additive Increase/Multiplicative Decrease
        Slow-start - exponential increase/decrease
        Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery
        Clock problems

Congestion-avoidance Mechanisms

        DECbit
        RED gateways
                implicit host notification by timeout
                when and what to drop
                        MinThreshold and MaxThreshold
                        MaxP and Weight
        partial packet discard

The Next Generation

        What else do we want to do with networks?
        What are the technical challenges?
        What are the tools and technologies?
        How it may go from here

What do we want to do next with nets?

        Fix some problems
        Do applications that require qos
        Build interrealm applications
        Maintain agency stature
        Make new commercial markets

Problems to fix

        Routing -
                permit policy as a factor
                become delay X bw sensitive
        Multicast -
                discover and join casts
                implement multicast routing
        IP v6
                addresses
                mobility
        Understand data networks
                flows
                congestion

Applications that require QoS

        Video and visualization
        Voice
        Bounded ftp's
        Synchronized streams for multimedia

Interrealm applications

        Interoperable authentication
        Common authorization and work flow tools
        Metadata standards

Maintain agency status

        Esnet
        NASA networking
        NGI
        NSF

Make new commercial markets

        videoconferencing
        ecommerce and esecurity
        next generation networking components

Applications taxonomy

        real-time
                intolerant
                        rate-adaptive
                        non-adaptive but controlled delay
                tolerant
                        adaptive by rate or delay
                        non-adaptive
        elastic
                interactive/interactive bulk/ asynchronous

Driver Applications

        video and H.320/323
        advanced digital libraries and multimedia
        multicast services
        real-time and delayed collaboration
        distributed simulations
        environmental crisis management
        public information access
        remote instrument control
        teleimmersion

Comments on Apps and Plumbing

       Advanced applications transform high-speed plumbing into value
       Advanced plumbing enables advanced applications
       Profligate use of bandwidth, per se, does not make an application
'advanced'
       Megalomaniac plumbing, per se, does not make the plumbing 'advanced'

Video

        broadcast, multicast and pt-pt
        digital video - MPEG 1, MPEG 2, DCT, Fractal
        lossless compression
        lossy compression - spatial and temporal
        intraframe and interframe techniques
        quantization, run length encoding, motion prediction

Packetized Video Challenges

        video is very dependent upon synchronization
        difficult transition between a continuous bit stream and a
collection of packets
        uncompressed video very high and constant bandwidth, loss tolerant
        compressed video much lower and bursty bandwidth, loss intolerant

Real-time and Delayed Collaboration

        control and synch of multiple audio and video streams
        shared access to information
        managed interactions
        maintenance of history and audit trails
        support of consistency

What are the Technical Challenges?

        Laws of Physics
        Delay-bandwidth product   - Desktops
        Quality of service (QOS)   - Net hardware
        Multicast
Laws of Humanity
        Routing and Addressing  - Middleware
        Applications   - Security
        Measurements and traffic analysis

Laws of Physics

        Delay-bandwidth product - the load in flight
        Quality of service (QOS) - differential service requirements for
applications and economics
        Desktops - what hardware and software
        Network hardware - boxes and lines
        Multicast - opens new classes of applications

Delay-Bandwidth product

        length of a bit at high speed
        effect of long pipes
        frames in flight
        consequences
                buffers, flow control, errors, backplanes, routers

Delay-bandwidth example

        Bandwidth                               Delay x BW
                T1                              18 KB
                Ethernet                        122 KB
                OC-3                            1.8 MB
                OC-24                   14.8 MB

Tyranny of Latency

        assume 100 ms real (48 ms theoretical) RTT cross-country file transfer
        assume 1 GBps line, 1 MB to transfer
        best result = 0.8 ms +100 ms   net thruput 79.4 Mbps
        typical 2k packet size, (1,1) sliding window = 0.8 ms + 50 s  net

thruput of 160 kbps

Quality of Service (QOS)

Possible QOS Requirements

        guaranteed bw
        delay/latency
        jitter
        packet loss
        application needs

Possible QOS Technologies

        classes of service
        overprovisioning
        atm
        rsvp
        diff-serv

Classes of Service

        by application
                allow certain applications to access high-speed devices
        by desktop
                highbandwidth to the desktop
                multiple parallel campus backbones
                WAN PVC's
        by IP address (and user)
                RED
                Traffic shaping

QOS Model Classification

        Scope: boundaries of service
                intermediate or end-end
        Control Model: granularity, duration and locus of control
proxies, levels of aggregation
        Transmission parameters
                packet loss rate     - MTU
                bandwidth      - delay average and variation

Typical QOS Scenarios

        transfer this file within X minutes
        provide a response time of less than y ms
        guarantee a smooth real-time video stream
        support a streaming multimedia presentation

Regardless of approach, QoS Challenges

        Issues at the edge
                Admission control
                Measurement (billing?)
                Marking of packets
        Issues at the core
                Provision of resources to marked packets
                Low packet loss in presence of very high delay-bandwidth
products
                per-flow knowledge?
        How near to complete end-to-end extent is possible

Desktops

        equipment - video, codecs
        applications
                invoking QOS
                web as DUI
        operating system
                buffers and timeouts
                context-switching and buffer care
                desktops - Memory Bottlenecks

Network hardware

        media issues - fiber, LEO's
        media signalling issues  ATM vs. SONET
        router issues - forwarding engine
        the fiber shortage ?

Multicast

        efficient one-many communications
        accomodate dynamic groups
        accomodate diversity of connectivity
        need at subnet and Internet levels
        currently - Mbone; does not scale
        "there is no problem that multicast doesn't make harder"

Laws of Humanity

        Routing and addressing
        Middleware
        Applications
        Security
        Network management

Routing and Addressing

        growth of routing tables
        non-hierarchical addressing
        complexity management
        optic routers

Middleware

        dynamic location and binding
        security
        version control
        clients and helper apps
        Security

Network

        Individual
        Host and resource

Network Management

        measurements and traffic analysis
        self-configuration
        self-organizing systems
        policies and routing

Traffic Analysis

        by flow
        by application or functional need
        sampling techniques
        switching makes analysis very hard

Measurement

        By end-users for audit
        By providers for audit and billing
        For fault isolation
        For interoperability