Increasing TCP's Initial Window

Metadata

Publisher: IETF
Doc Type: Experimental
Pages: 24
Abstract: This document proposes an experiment to increase the permitted TCP initial window (IW) from between 2 and 4 segments, as specified in RFC 3390, to 10 segments with a fallback to the existing recommendation when performance issues are detected. It discusses the motivation behind the increase, the advantages and disadvantages of the higher initial window, and presents results from several large-scale experiments showing that the higher initial window improves the overall performance of many web services without resulting in a congestion collapse. The document closes with a discussion of usage and deployment for further experimental purposes recommended by the IETF TCP Maintenance and Minor Extensions (TCPM) working group.
Publication Date: 2013-04-01
Status Note: Experimental
DOI: 10.17487/RFC6928
Link: https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC6928
Author(s): Jerry Chu
Nandita Dukkipati
Yuchung Cheng
Matt Mathis

Latest version of IETF RFC 6928

Document Versions — IETF RFC 6928

▶ IETF RFC 6928 (2013-04-01)

THIS DOC [ACTIVE] [LATEST VERSION]

Normative Reference(s)

IETF RFC 2018 [Active*]
IETF RFC 2119 [Active*]
IETF RFC 2616 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 3390 [Active*]
IETF RFC 5681 [Active*]
IETF RFC 5827 [Active*]
IETF RFC 6298 [Active*]

Bibliographic Reference(s)

10.1016-j.comnet.2011.02.002 — Sch11-1 EXTERNAL
Dukkipati, N., Refice, T., Cheng, Y., Chu, J., Sutin, N., Agarwal, A., Herbert, T., and J. Arvind, "An Argument for Increasing TCP's Initial Congestion Window", ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communications Review, vol. 40 (2010), pp. 27-33. July 2010. EXTERNAL
Jarvinen, I., Nyrhinen. A., Ding, A., and M. Kojo, "A Simulation Study on Increasing TCP's IW", presented to the IRTF ICCRG meeting, IETF 78, July 2010, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/iccrg-7.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Allman, M., "Initial Congestion Window Specification" , Work in Progress, November 2010. EXTERNAL
Liu, D., Allman, M., Jin, S., and L. Wang, "Congestion Control Without a Startup Phase", Protocols for Fast, Long Distance Networks (PFLDnet) Workshop, February 2007, < http://www.icir.org/mallman/papers/ jumpstart-pfldnet07.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Sounders S., "Roundup on Parallel Connections", High Performance Web Sites blog, March 2008, < http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2008/03/20/ roundup-on-parallel-connections >. EXTERNAL
Chu, J. and N. Dukkipati, "Increasing TCP's Initial Window", presented to the IRTF ICCRG and IETF TCPM working group meetings, IETF 77, March 2010, < http://www.ietf.org/ proceedings/77/slides/tcpm-4.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Partridge, C., Rockwell, D., Allman, M., Krishnan, R., and J. Sterbenz, "A Swifter Start for TCP", Technical Report No. 8339, BBN Technologies, March 2002. EXTERNAL
Chu, J., "Tuning TCP Parameters for the 21st Century", presented to TCPM working group meeting, IETF 75, July 2009. < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/75/slides/tcpm-1 >. EXTERNAL
Gettys, J., "Bufferbloat: Dark buffers in the Internet", presented to the TSV Area meeting, IETF 80, March 2011, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/slides/tsvarea-1.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Gettys, J., "IW10 Considered Harmful" , Work in Progress, August 2011. EXTERNAL
Dukkipati, D., Cheng, Y., Chu, J., and M. Mathis, "Increasing TCP initial window", presented to the IRTF ICCRG meeting, IETF 78, July 2010, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/slides/iccrg-3.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Scharf, M., "Performance and Fairness Evaluation of IW10 and Other Fast Startup Schemes", presented to the IRTF ICCRG meeting, IETF 80, March 2011, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/80/slides/iccrg-1.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Dischinger, M., Gummadi, K., Haeberlen, A., and S. Saroiu, "Characterizing Residential Broadband Networks", Internet Measurement Conference, October 24-26, 2007. EXTERNAL
Belshe, M., "A Client-Side Argument For Changing TCP Slow Start", January 2010, < http://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/spdy/ An_Argument_For_Changing_TCP_Slow_Start.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Nichols, K. and V. Jacobson, "Controlling Queue Delay", ACM QUEUE, May 6, 2012. EXTERNAL
Allman, M., "A Web Server's View of the Transport Layer", ACM Computer Communication Review, 30(5), October 2000. EXTERNAL
Visweswaraiah, V. and J. Heidemann, "Improving Restart of Idle TCP Connections", Technical Report 97-661, University of Southern California, November 1997. EXTERNAL
Al-Fares, M., Elmeleegy, K., Reed, B., and I. Gashinsky, "Overclocking the Yahoo! CDN for Faster Web Page Loads", Internet Measurement Conference, November 2011. EXTERNAL
Chu, J. and Wang, Y., "A Testbed Study on IW10 vs IW3", presented to the TCPM working group meeting, IETF 79, November 2010, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/slides/tcpm-0 >. EXTERNAL
Ramachandran, S. and A. Jain, "Aggregate Statistics of Size Related Metrics of Web Pages metrics", May 2010, < http://code.google.com/speed/articles/web-metrics.html >. EXTERNAL
Jacobson, V., "Congestion Avoidance and Control", Computer Communication Review, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 314-329, Aug. 1988. EXTERNAL
Floyd, S. and V. Jacobson, "Random Early Detection gateways for Congestion Avoidance", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, V.1 N.4, August 1993, p. 397-413. EXTERNAL
"SPDY: An experimental protocol for a faster web", < http://dev.chromium.org/spdy >. EXTERNAL
Padmanabhan V.N. and R. Katz, "TCP Fast Start: A technique for speeding up web transfers", in Proceedings of IEEE Globecom '98 Internet Mini-Conference, 1998. EXTERNAL
Scharf, M., "Quick-Start, Jump-Start, and Other Fast Startup Approaches", presented to the IRTF ICCRG meeting, IETF 73, November 2008, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/73/slides/iccrg-2.pdf >. EXTERNAL
Floyd, S., and K. Fall, "Promoting the Use of End-to-End Congestion Control in the Internet", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, August 1999. EXTERNAL
Akamai Technologies, Inc., "The State of the Internet, 3rd Quarter 2009", January 2010, < http://www.akamai.com/html/ about/press/releases/2010/press_011310_1.html >. EXTERNAL
Touch, J., "Automating the Initial Window in TCP" , Work in Progress, July 2012. EXTERNAL
Labovitz, C., Iekel-Johnson, S., McPherson, D., Oberheide, J. Jahanian, F., and M. Karir, "Atlas Internet Observatory 2009 Annual Report", 47th NANOG Conference, October 2009. EXTERNAL
"TCP IW10 links", January 2012, < http://code.google.com/speed/protocols/tcpm-IW10.html >. EXTERNAL
Jarvinen, I., Nyrhinen. A., Ding, A., and M. Kojo, "Effect of IW and Initial RTO changes", presented to the TCPM working group meeting, IETF 79, November 2010, < http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/slides/tcpm-1.pdf >. EXTERNAL
IETF RFC 2309 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 2414 [Superseded*]
IETF RFC 3042 [Active*]
IETF RFC 3150 [Active*]
IETF RFC 4782 [Active*]
IETF RFC 6077 [Active*]

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Referenced By

IETF RFC 7414 [Active*]
IETF RFC 8108 [Active*]
IETF RFC 9040 [Active*]