Window Flow Control: Macroscopic Properties from Microscopic Factors

This paper studies window flow control focusing on bridging the gap between microscopic factors such as burstiness in sub-RTT timescales, and observable macroscopic properties such as steady state bandwidth sharing and flow level stability. Using new models, we analytically capture notable effects of microscopic behavior on macroscopic quantities. For loss-based protocols, we calculate the loss synchronization rate for different flows and use it to quantitatively explain the unfair bandwidth sharing between paced and unpaced TCP flows. For delay-based protocols, we show that the ratios of round trip delays are critical to the stability of the system. These results deepen the fundamental understanding of congestion control systems. Packet level simulations are used to verify our theoretical claims.