Transport Layer

Congestion Control
DATA TRAFFIC

• The main focus of congestion control

and quality of service is data traffic.
• In congestion control, traffic congestion
is avoided.
 Traffic descriptors

• Traffic descriptors are qualitative values that represent a data flow.

• Average Data Rate: It indicates the average
bandwidth needed by the traffic.
• The peak data rate defines the maximum data rate of
the traffic. It indicates the peak bandwidth that the
network needs for traffic to pass through without
changing its data flow.
• The maximum burst size normally refers to the
maximum length of time the traffic is generated at
the peak rate.
• The effective bandwidth is the bandwidth that the
network needs to allocate for the flow of traffic. The
Traffic flow effective bandwidth is a function of three values:
average data rate, peak data rate, and maximum
burst size.
Three traffic
profiles
• A constant-bit-rate (CBR), or a fixed-
rate, traffic model has a data rate that
does not change.

• In the variable-bit-rate (VBR) category,

the rate of the data flow changes in
time, with the changes smooth
instead of sudden and sharp

• In the bursty data category, the data

rate changes suddenly in a very short
time.
CONGESTION

• Congestion in a network may occur if the load on

the network i.e. the number of packets sent to
the network is greater than the capacity of the
network (the number of packets a network can
handle).

• Congestion control refers to the mechanisms and

techniques to control the congestion and keep
the load below the capacity.
 • Congestion in a network or internetwork occurs because routers and
switches have queues-buffers that hold the packets before and after
processing. When a packet arrives at the incoming interface, it
Queues in a undergoes three steps before departing,
• 1. The packet is put at the end of the input queue while waiting to be

router checked.
• 2. The processing module of the router removes the packet from the
input queue once it reaches the front of the queue and uses its routing
table and the destination address to find the route.
• 3. The packet is put in the appropriate output queue and waits its turn
to be sent.
Network Performance

• Congestion control involves two factors that

measure the performance of a network: Delay and
Throughput
• Delay- If load << capacity of the network, the
delay is at a minimum. This minimum delay is
composed of propagation delay and processing
delay, both of which are negligible. If load
reaches the network capacity, the delay
increases sharply because we now need to add
the waiting time in the queues to the total delay.
• Delay becomes infinite when the load is greater Packet delay and throughput as functions of load
than the capacity.
• Throughput- Throughput in a network can be
defined as the number of packets passing through
the network in a unit of time.
CONGESTION
CONTROL
• Congestion control refers to techniques
and mechanisms that can either prevent
congestion, before it happens, or remove
congestion, after it has happened.

• In general, congestion control

mechanisms can be divided into two
broad categories:
• open-loop congestion control
(prevention)
• closed-loop congestion control
(removal).
 Congestion control categories

• In open-loop congestion control,

policies are applied to prevent
congestion before it happens.

• The retransmission policy and the

retransmission timers must be
designed to optimize efficiency and
at the same time prevent
congestion.
• The Selective Repeat window is
better than the Go-Back-N window
for congestion control
Congestion control categories- Open Loop

The acknowledgment policy imposed by the receiver may also affect congestion.
If the receiver does not acknowledge every packet it receives, it may slow down
the sender and help prevent congestion

A good discarding policy by the routers may prevent congestion and at the same
time may not harm the integrity of the transmission.

An admission policy, which is a quality-of-service mechanism, can also prevent

congestion in virtual-circuit networks.
Congestion control categories- • Closed-loop congestion control mechanisms try to alleviate congestion after
Closed Loop it happens.
• Congestion control mechanism in which a congested node stops receiving data from
the immediate upstream node or nodes.

• The backpressure technique can be applied only to virtual circuit networks, in which
each node knows the upstream node from which a flow of data is Coming.

Backpressure method for alleviating congestion

 Choke packet  A choke packet is a packet sent by a node to the source to inform it of
congestion.
 In implicit signalling- there is no communication between the congested node
or nodes and the source
 Explicit Signaling- The node that experiences congestion can explicitly send a
signal to the source or destination.

In TCP
The sender has two pieces of information: the receiver-advertised window size and the congestion window size.
The actual size of the window is the minimum of these two.
Actual window size = minimum (rwnd, cwnd)
Congestion Policy
TCP's general policy for handling congestion is based on three phases:
 Slow start
 Congestion avoidance
 Congestion detection.

• In the slow-start algorithm, the size of the congestion window increases

exponentially until it reaches a threshold.
• The sender keeps track of a variable named ssthresh (slow-start threshold). In
most implementations the value of ssthresh is 65,535 bytes.
• Rate is exponential as shown below:
• Start ..... cwnd=1
• After round 1 ..... cwnd= 21 =2
• After round 2 ..... cwnd= 22 =4
• After round 3 ..... cwnd= 23 =8
Congestion avoidance &
Congestion detection
Congestion avoidance, additive increase
• In the congestion avoidance algorithm, the size of the congestion window
increases additively until congestion is detected.
• TCP defines another algorithm called congestion avoidance, which undergoes an
additive increase instead of an exponential one.
• Start cwnd=1
• After round 1 cwnd= 1+ 1 =2
• After round 2 cwnd=2+ 1 =3
• After round 3 cwnd=3+ 1 =4

Congestion detection, Multiplicative Decrease

• If congestion occurs, the congestion window size must be decreased.
• The only way - retransmit a segment.
• Retransmission can occur in one of two cases: timer times out or when three
ACKs are received.
• An implementation reacts to congestion detection in one of the following ways:
• ❏ If detection is by time-out, a new slow start phase starts.
• ❏ If detection is by three ACKs, a new congestion avoidance phase starts.
TCP congestion policy summary

• Summary of the congestion

policy of TCP and the
relationships between the
three phases.