Fall 2007 Seminar Series

DATE: September 13
LOCATION: E40-298
TIME: 4:15pm
Reception immediately following in the ORC ConferenceRoom, E40-106

SPEAKER:
Damon Wischik

TITLE
Queueing Theory for TCP

ABSTRACT
Most traffic in the Internet is controlled by TCP, an algorithm which adjusts the transmission rate of a traffic flow in response to the congestion it perceives in the network. It aims to keep the network running smoothly, with high utilization and reasonable congestion. The success of this control loop depends on how congestion occurs, and in particular on the behaviour of queues at Internet routers. I will describe the sort of queueing theory which is appropriate for modelling TCP traffic, and what it means for the TCP control loop. I will explain why buffer sizes in core Internet routers should be cut from around 10 Gbytes (the current standard) to 20 kbytes, and why this should improve performance.