A duality model of TCP and queue management algorithms

  • Authors:
  • Steven H. Low

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

  • Venue:
  • IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON)
  • Year:
  • 2003

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.07

Visualization

Abstract

We propose a duality model of end-to-end congestion control and apply it to understand the equilibrium properties of TCP and active queue management schemes. The basic idea is to regard source rates as primal variables and congestion measures as dual variables, and congestion control as a distributed primal-dual algorithm over the Internet to maximize aggregate utility subject to capacity constraints. The primal iteration is carried out by TCP algorithms such as Reno or Vegas, and the dual iteration is carried out by queue management algorithms such as DropTail, RED or REM. We present these algorithms and their generalizations, derive their utility functions, and study their interaction.