TCP as an Implementation of Age-Based Scheduling: Fairness and Performance

— We show that different flavors of TCP may be viewed as implementations of age-based scheduling disciplines. By parameterizing the scheduling disciplines of interest we are able to position variants of TCP in a wide spectrum having FCFS (First-Come First-Served) and LAS (Least Attained Service first) as extremal policies, and including PS (Processor Sharing) as an intermediate case. We argue that for highly loaded systems, providing a fair bandwidth allocation among all users is secondary to ensuring network stability. So as to isolate protocol fairness from congestion effects, we therefore focus on scenarios with infinite buffers. This way, asymmetries in capacity shares are the consequences of the protocol only, and not affected by the packet loss process. The model, however, is flexible enough to include finite buffers with random packet loss as a special case (for example to capture Active Queue Management). The results are helpful in studying fairness and performance conce...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Arzad Alam Kherani, Rudesindo Núñez-Queija
• Keywords: Age-based Scheduling Disciplines, Communications, INFOCOM 2006, Packet Loss, Scheduling Disciplines