[e2e] Stupid Question: Why are missing ACKs not considered as indicator for congestion?

[Sushant Rewaskar]

Hi,
I agree with Lachlan. In TCP there is no way to know when an ack is lost as
it carries no "sequence number" of its own. (so in fact not only it is not
done but it cannot be easily done in the current set-up). 

To get a better understanding of these issues you may want to read the
string of papers and RFC on Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP)
(http://www.read.cs.ucla.edu/dccp/ )  


Take care,
Sushant Rewaskar
-----------------------------
UNC Chapel Hill
www.cs.unc.edu/~rewaskar 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org
[mailto:end2end-interest-bounces at postel.org] On Behalf Of Lachlan Andrew
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 5:18 PM
To: Detlef Bosau
Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org
Subject: Re: [e2e] Stupid Question: Why are missing ACKs not considered
asindicator for congestion?

Greetings Detlef,

On 29/01/07, Detlef Bosau <detlef.bosau at web.de> wrote:
>
> In TCP, lost / dropped packets are recognised as congestion indicator.
> We don4t do so with missing ACKs.
>
> If a TCP packet is dropped, this is reckognized as congestion
> indication. Shouldn4t be a dropped ACK packet seen as congestion
> indication as well?

Because ACKs are cumulative, we don't know that separate ACKs were
sent for each packet.

For example, high-end NICs typically have "interrupt coalescence",
which delivers a large bunch of packets simultaneously to reduce CPU
overhead.  A single "fat ACK" is sent which cumulatively acknowledges
all of these packets.  This happens even when the receiver is not
congested.


Another factor is that ACKs are typically small compared with data
packets.  The total network throughput is much greater if we throttle
only the sources contributing most to a given link's congestion,
namely those sending full data packets over the link.

Cheers,
Lachlan

-- 
Lachlan Andrew  Dept of Computer Science, Caltech
1200 E California Blvd, Mail Code 256-80, Pasadena CA 91125, USA
Phone: +1 (626) 395-8820    Fax: +1 (626) 568-3603