Stability Analysis of a Max-Min Fair Rate Control Protocol (RCP) in a Small Buffer Regime

The Rate Control Protocol (RCP) uses explicit feedback from routers to control network congestion. RCP estimates it's fair rate from two forms of feedback: rate mismatch and queue size. An important design question that remains open in RCP is whether the presence of queue size feedback is helpful, given the presence of feedback from rate mismatch. The feedback from routers to endsystems is time delayed, and may introduce instabilities and complex non-linear dynamics. Delay dynamical systems are often modeled using delay differential equations to facilitate a mathematical analysis of their performance and dynamics. The RCP models with and without queue size feedback give rise to two distinct non-linear delay differential equations. Earlier work on this design question was based on methods of linear systems theory. For further progress it is quite natural to employ nonlinear techniques. In this study, we approach this design question using tools from control and bifurcation theory. The analytical results reveal that the removal of queue feedback could enhance both stability and convergence properties. Further, using Poincaré normal forms and center manifold theory, we investigate two nonlinear properties, namely, the type of Hopf bifurcation and the asymptotic stability of the bifurcating limit cycles. We show that the presence of queue feedback in the RCP can lead to a sub-critical Hopf bifurcation, which would give rise either to the onset of large amplitude limit cycles or to unstable limit cycles. Whereas, in the absence of queue feedback, the Hopf bifurcation is always super-critical and the bifurcating limit cycles are stable. The analysis is complemented with computations and some packet-level simulations as well. In terms of design, our study suggests that the presence of both forms of feedback may be detrimental to the performance of RCP.

show abstract

“…Here R * denotes the equilibrium of (17). It is also highlighted in [34] that equation (17) cannot undergo a sub-critical Hopf bifurcation.…”

Section: Without Queue Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of two forms of feedback on the performance of the Rate Control Protocol (RCP)

Abuthahir

Malangadan

Raina

2020

Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…RCP has received significant attention from the research community: [5] develops some stability properties of a maxmin RCP in small buffer regime, [6] computationally develops some sufficient conditions for local stability, [7] considers a dynamic environment with RCP flows arriving and departing over a single link, [8] develops an α-fair variant of RCP and investigates some of the associated local stability properties, [9] develops a NetFPGA hardware implementation of RCP, [10] develops a new congestion controller called Proportional 1 URL: https://tools.ietf.org/wg/rmcat/ Integral Queue Independent RCP, [11] performs local bifurcation analysis for some congestion control algorithms, and [12] develops an experimental framework used to evaluate several ECPs. The range of these studies exhibit the difficulty of developing a new transport protocol.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equilibrium properties of rate control protocols

Valluri

2015

2015 10th International Conference for Internet Technology and Secured Transactions (ICITST)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We analyze the stability of the Rate Control Protocol (RCP) using two different models that have been proposed in literature. Our objective is to better understand the impact of the protocol parameters and the effect different forms of feedback have on the stability of the network. We also highlight that different time scales, depending on the propagation delay relative to the queuing delay, have an impact on the nonlinear and the stochastic properties of the protocol fluid models. To better understand some of the nonlinear properties, we resort to local bifurcation analysis where we exhibit the existence of a Hopf type bifurcation that then leads to stable limit cycles. Our work serves as a step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the nonlinear fluid models that have been used as representative models for RCP.

show abstract

“…Many algorithms to improve wireless TCP performance have been proposed [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. In [1,2], the source is informed of the reason for a packet loss explicitly.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The algorithms in [12,13] estimate the packet rate of the connection by monitoring ACK reception rate. In [14][15][16], they develop a variant of RCP (Rate Control Protocol) under the max-min criterion and α -fairness. In [15,16], they study the local stability of RCP for a single resource with a large or small buffer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In [14][15][16], they develop a variant of RCP (Rate Control Protocol) under the max-min criterion and α -fairness. In [15,16], they study the local stability of RCP for a single resource with a large or small buffer. However, there is far less result on methods for wireless TCP to provide fair sharing of the bandwidth and high link utilization.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Improving TCP Performance for Wireless Networks Based on Successive ECN

Byun¹

2010

Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, we propose an algorithm to improve TCP performance over wireless links. TCP is known to have poor performance over wireless links because TCP has no mechanism to differentiate congestion loss from wireless loss, and treats all losses as congestive. We present a simple method to determine the cause of packet loss using the successive ECN. In addition, we present an algorithm to control the congestion window size based on the estimated queue state in order to guarantee the fairness and high link utilization.

show abstract

Stability Analysis of a Max-Min Fair Rate Control Protocol (RCP) in a Small Buffer Regime

Cited by 23 publications

References 34 publications

Effect of two forms of feedback on the performance of the Rate Control Protocol (RCP)

Effect of two forms of feedback on the performance of the Rate Control Protocol (RCP)

Equilibrium properties of rate control protocols

Improving TCP Performance for Wireless Networks Based on Successive ECN

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About