Coupled Congestion Control for Multipath Transport Protocols

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Publisher: IETF
Doc Type: Experimental
Pages: 12
Abstract: Often endpoints are connected by multiple paths, but communications are usually restricted to a single path per connection. Resource usage within the network would be more efficient were it possible for these multiple paths to be used concurrently. Multipath TCP is a proposal to achieve multipath transport in TCP. New congestion control algorithms are needed for multipath transport protocols such as Multipath TCP, as single path algorithms have a series of issues in the multipath context. One of the prominent problems is that running existing algorithms such as standard TCP independently on each path would give the multipath flow more than its fair share at a bottleneck link traversed by more than one of its subflows. Further, it is desirable that a source with multiple paths available will transfer more traffic using the least congested of the paths, achieving a property called "resource pooling" where a bundle of links effectively behaves like one shared link with bigger capacity. This would increase the overall efficiency of the network and also its robustness to failure. This document presents a congestion control algorithm that couples the congestion control algorithms running on different subflows by linking their increase functions, and dynamically controls the overall aggressiveness of the multipath flow. The result is a practical algorithm that is fair to TCP at bottlenecks while moving traffic away from congested links. This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community.
Publication Date: 2011-10-01
Status Note: Experimental
DOI: 10.17487/RFC6356
Link: https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC6356
Author(s): Costin Raiciu
Mark J. Handley
Damon Wischik
Keyword(s): TCP, Congestion Control, MPTCP

Latest version of IETF RFC 6356

Document Versions — IETF RFC 6356

▶ IETF RFC 6356 (2011-10-01)

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Normative Reference(s)

IETF RFC 793 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 2119 [Active*]
IETF RFC 5681 [Active*]

Bibliographic Reference(s)

Kelly, F. and T. Voice, "Stability of end-to-end algorithms for joint routing and rate control", ACM SIGCOMM CCR vol. 35 num. 2, pp. 5-12, 2005, < http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1064415 >. EXTERNAL
Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., and O. Bonaventure, "TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple Addresses", Work in Progress, July 2011. EXTERNAL
Wischik, D., Handley, M., and M. Bagnulo Braun, "The Resource Pooling Principle", ACM SIGCOMM CCR vol. 38 num. 5, pp. 47-52, October 2008, < http://ccr.sigcomm.org/online/files/p47-handleyA4.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Wischik, D., Raiciu, C., Greenhalgh, A., and M. Handley, "Design, Implementation and Evaluation of Congestion Control for Multipath TCP", Usenix NSDI , March 2011, <htt p://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/c.raiciu/files/mptcp-nsdi.pdf>. EXTERNAL
IETF RFC 3465 [Active*]
IETF RFC 6181 [Active*]

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IETF RFC 6356, Coupled Congestion Control for Multipath Transport Protocols
doi: 10.17487/RFC6356
url: https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC6356

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Referenced By

IETF RFC 6824 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 6897 [Active*]
IETF RFC 7414 [Active*]