An Overview of Packet Reordering in Transmission Control Protocol (TCP): Problems, Solutions, and Challenges

Author

Leung, Ka-Cheong ; Li, Victor O K ; Yang, Daiqin

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Hong Kong Univ.

Volume

18

Issue

4

fYear

2007

fDate

4/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

522

Lastpage

535

Abstract

Transmission control protocol (TCP) is the most popular transport layer protocol for the Internet. Due to various reasons, such as multipath routing, route fluttering, and retransmissions, packets belonging to the same flow may arrive out of order at a destination. Such packet reordering violates the design principles of some traffic control mechanisms in TCP and, thus, poses performance problems. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive and in-depth survey on recent research on packet reordering in TCP. The causes and problems for packet reordering are discussed. Various representative algorithms are examined and compared by computer simulations. The ported program codes and simulation scripts are available for download. Some open questions are discussed to stimulate further research in this area

Keywords

Internet; packet switching; telecommunication congestion control; transport protocols; Internet; computer simulation; congestion control; packet reordering; transmission control protocol; transport layer protocol; ARPANET; Communication system control; Computational modeling; IP networks; Internet; Out of order; Routing; Telecommunication network reliability; Traffic control; Transport protocols; Computer simulations of TCP; Internet; Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).; congestion control; flow control; packet reordering;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1045-9219

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPDS.2007.1011

Filename

4118693