There is a growing interest in the use of variants of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in high-speed networks. ns-2 has implementations of many of these high-speed TCP variants, as does Linux. ns-2, through an extension, permits the incorporation of Linux TCP code within ns-2 simulations. As these TCP variants become more widely used, users are concerned about how these different variants of TCP might interact in a real network environment -how fair are these protocol variants to each other (in their use of the available capacity) when sharing the same network. Typically, the answer to this question might be sought through simulation and/or by use of an experimental testbed. So, we compare with TCP NewReno the fairness of the congestion control algorithms for 5 high-speed TCP variants -BIC, Cubic, Scalable, High-Speed and Hamilton -on both ns-2 and on an experimental testbed running Linux. In both cases, we use the same TCP code from Linux. We observe some differences between the behaviour of these TCP variants when comparing the testbed results to the results from ns-2, but also note that there is generally good agreement.

We introduce a new methodology to evaluate the perceived quality of video with variable physical quality. The methodology is then used to assess an existing guidelinethat high frame rate is more important than quantization when watching high motion video, such as sports coverage. We test this claim in two studies that examine the relationship between these physical quality metrics and perceived quality. In Study 1, 41 soccer fans viewed CIFsized images on a desktop computer. Study 2 repeated the experiment with 37 soccer fans, viewing the same content, in QCIF size, on a palmtop device. Contrary to existing guidelines, we found that users prefer high-resolution images to high frame rate. We conclude that the rule "high motion = high frame rate" does not apply to small screens. With small screen devices, reducing quantization removes important information about the players and the ball. These findings have important implications for service providers and designers of streamed video applications.

We present experimental results evaluating fairness of several proposals to change the TCP congestion control algorithm, in support of operation on high bandwidth-delayproduct (BDP) network paths. We examine and compare the fairness of New Reno TCP, BIC, Cubic, Hamilton-TCP, Highspeed-TCP and Scalable-TCP. We focus on four different views of fairness: TCP-friendliness, RTT-fairness, intraand inter-protocol fairness.

Abstract-Many new transport protocols are being defined, including, for example, variants of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), to better match the requirements of new applications. A key issue in the evaluation of protocol flows, in terms of their performance, is how fair they are to other flows. Specifically, it is important to understand how a mix of existing and/or new protocols will interact with each other when using the same network resources. Such observations help to inform protocol design, and allow an assessment of potential impacts on users. We present a simple, yet effective, methodology for examining a specific case of inter-flow fairness based solely on measurements of flow performance. As well as using an existing fairness metric, we propose a new metric which provides a richer information summary for the evaluation of fairness.

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