Bufferbloat: Dark Buffers in the Internet

  • Authors:
  • Jim Gettys

  • Affiliations:
  • • Bell Labs

  • Venue:
  • IEEE Internet Computing
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Bufferbloat is the existence of excessively large (bloated) buffers into systems, particularly network communication systems. Systems suffering from bufferbloat will have bad latency under load under some or all circumstances, depending on if and where the bottleneck in the communication's path exists. Bufferbloat encourages network congestion; it destroys congestion avoidance in transport protocols such as HTTP, TCP, Bittorrent, and so on. Network congestion-avoidance algorithms depend on timely packet drops or ECN; bloated buffers invalidate this design presumption. Without active queue management, these bloated buffers will fill, and stay full. Bufferbloat is an endemic disease in today's Internet.