[e2e] TCP and Implementation Related Questions

[Lloyd Wood]

For an overview of Vista TCP features (and testing against Windows 
Server 2003 for a geo satellite delay environment -- they didn't test 
against anything else...), see slides and video at
<https://outlook2003.surrey.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.iet.tv/>http://www.iet.tv/
26 Jun 2006 Technology - Communications
IP over Satcom for Military Users
David Race and Paul Thomas
Event: Military SatComs 2006
(search on Microsoft)

This describes Microsoft's "Compound TCP" implementation. They made a 
big deal about having a 64K window improving the Vista stack 
performance in that environment, as if that wasn't the obvious thing 
to do with a 16-bit pointer on a machine with a gig of memory. See also

A Compound TCP Approach for High-speed and Long Distance Networks
Technical paper on an experimental variant of TCP optimised for 
high-speed, long-distance networks.
research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?type=Technical%20Report&id=940

Compound TCP: A Scalable and TCP-Friendly Congestion Control for High 
Speed Networks
<https://outlook2003.surrey.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.hpcc.jp/pfldnet2006/paper/s4_01.pdf>http://www.hpcc.jp/pfldnet2006/paper/s4_01.pdf
http://www.hpcc.jp/pfldnet2006/slides/s4_01.pdf

I expect from this that Microsoft's cwnd implementation will be 
somewhat outside RFC specs - more aggressive? Can't find any internet 
drafts describing it either; it seems they've not bothered with the 
IETF. (Does the IETF still do bakeoffs, anyway?)

I believe that as TCP is an ever-decreasing amount of internet 
traffic, non-RFC changes to deployed congestion control really don't 
matter as a threat to The State of Internet Congestion That Must Be 
Preserved At All Costs and the Illusion that TCP Friendliness 
Matters. But as an endhost upgrade, Windows Vista deployment will 
have a significant effect on network performance for its userbase.

L.

hey, faster spam from 0wnd machines!

At Saturday 22/07/2006 01:48 -0400, Salman Abdul Baset wrote:

>1) I want to confirm if Windows XP implements:
>  a) RFC 2581 TCP Congestion Window (probably)
>  b) RFC 2861 TCP Congestion Window Validation (not sure)
>  c) RFC 3465 Appropriate Byte Counting (probably not)
>
>Does anyone know if they will be supported in Windows Vista?
>
>2) RFC 2861 specified two key points
>  a) Congestion window should be reduced after a idle period.
>  b) Congestion window should not be increased more than the application
>     rate if application is rate-limited or, saying it differently, cwnd
>     should not be increased if current cwnd was not fully utilized.
>
>  This is an experimental RFC. Are there any updates to this? Is it
>  recommended that all implementations should support it?
>
>3) If an implementation only follows RFC 2581, then even for a
>rate-limited application, the cwnd will keep increasing, beyond the rate
>at which application is sending data. There are some interesting effects
>of this phenomena for CBR traffic. To check that, RFC 2861 proposed to
>limit cwnd increase if the cwnd was not fully utilized.
>
>4) Does ns2 implement RFC 2861? I don't think so because if I rate limit
>the application (use CBR over TCP), cwnd keeps increasing beyond the
>application rate.
>
>5) Finally, does anyone know how to get the cwnd variable in Windows? I
>don't think this is possible using getsockopt() (Linux, TCP_INFO) but have
>not been able to confirm the non-existence of such a method.
>
>Regards,
>Salman