Multi-layer loss recovery in TCP over optical burst-switched networks

It is well-known that the bufferless nature of optical burst-switching (OBS) networks cause random burst loss even at low traffic loads. When TCP is used over OBS, these random losses make the TCP sender decrease its congestion window even though the network may not be congested. This results in significant TCP throughput degradation. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer loss-recovery approach with automatic retransmission request (ARQ) and Snoop for OBS networks given that TCP is used at the transport layer. We evaluate the performance of Snoop and ARQ at the lower layer over a hybrid IP-OBS network. Based on the simulation results, the proposed multi-layer hybrid ARQ + Snoop approach outperforms all other approaches even at high loss probability. We developed an analytical model for end-to-end TCP throughput and verified the model with simulation results.     

Dropping Policy with Burst Retransmission to Improve the Throughput of TCP Over Optical Burst-switched Networks

A major concern in optical burst-switched (OBS) networks is contention, which occurs when more than one bursts contend for the same data channel at the same time. Due to the bufferless nature of OBS networks, these contentions randomly occur at any degree of congestion in the network. When contention occurs at any core node, the core node drops bursts according to its dropping policy. Burst loss in OBS networks significantly degrades the throughput of TCP sources in the local access networks because current TCP congestion control mechanisms perform a slow start phase mainly due to contention rather than heavy congestion. However, there has not been much study about the impact of burst loss on the performance of TCP over OBS networks. To improve TCP throughput over OBS networks, we first introduce a dropping policy with burst retransmission that retransmits the bursts dropped due to contention, at the ingress node. Then, we extend the dropping policy with burst retransmission to drop a burst that has experienced fewer retransmissions in the event of contention at a core node in order to reduce the number of events that a TCP source enters the slow start phase due to contention. In addition, we propose to limit the number of retransmissions of each burst to prevent severe congestion. For the performance evaluation of the proposed schemes, we provide an analytic throughput model of TCP over OBS networks. Through simulations as well as analytic modeling, it is shown that the proposed dropping policy with burst retransmission can improve TCP throughput over OBS networks compared with an existing dropping policy without burst retransmission.     

A framework of prioritized burst segmentation supporting controlled retransmission in OBS networks

In optical burst switching (OBS) networks, burst contentions in OBS core nodes may cause data loss. To reduce data loss, retransmission scheme has been applied. However, uncontrolled retransmission may increase network load significantly and data loss probability defeating the retransmission purpose. In addition, in a priority traffic existing OBS network, OBS nodes may apply different retransmission mechanisms to priorities bursts for quality-of-service (QoS) support. This study has developed a controlled retransmission scheme for prioritized burst segmentation to support QoS in OBS networks. Unlike previous works in the literature, we have set a different value to retransmission probability at each contention and propose a retransmission analytical model for burst segmentation contention resolution scheme. In addition, we have applied the proposed retransmission scheme to the prioritized burst segmentation for QoS support. We have taken into account the load at each link due to both fresh and retransmitted traffic, and have calculated the path blocking probability and byte loss probability (ByLP) for high-priority and low-priority burst to evaluate network performance. An extensive simulation has been proposed to validate our analytical model.     

OBS网络中一种基于突发包优先级分割的可控重传方案

在光突发交换(OBS)网络中,突发包会由于竞争OBS核心节点输出端口的有限波长资源而发生冲突。突发包重传能够在一定程度上减少由于突发包在核心节点冲突而导致的数据损失,但重传次数的增加可能会加重网络负荷,反而增加数据丢失率。并且,在多业务存在的OBS网络中,重传方案需要能够实现区分服务以保证网络的服务质量(QoS)。据此,本文提出一种基于突发包优先级分割的可控重传方案,在实施优先级分割的同时,根据网络负荷赋予每次重传不同的概率,并对重传次数加以控制。最后,仿真分析了路径阻塞率和不同优先级业务的字节丢失率(ByLP,byte loss probability)性能。     

FAST TCP over optical burst switched networks: Modeling and stability analysis

FAST TCP is important for promoting data-intensive applications since it can cleverly react to both packet loss and delay for detecting network congestion. This paper provides a continuous time model and extensive stability analysis of FAST TCP congestion-control mechanism in bufferless Optical Burst Switched Networks (OBS). The paper first shows that random burst contentions are essential to stabilize the network, but cause throughput degradation in FAST TCP flows when a burst with all the packets from a single round is dropped. Second, it shows that FAST TCP is vulnerable to burst delay and fails to detect network congestion due to the little variation of round-trip time, thus unstable. Finally it shows that introducing extra delays by implementing burst retransmission stabilizes FAST TCP over OBS. The paper proves that FAST TCP is not stable over barebone OBS. However, it is locally, exponentially, and asymptotically stable over OBS with burst retransmission.     

Reducing the impact of false time out on TCP performance in TCP over OBS networks

Random burst contention losses plague the performance of Optical Burst Switched networks. Such random losses occur even in low load network condition due to the analogous behavior of wavelength and routing algorithms. Since a burst may carry many packets from many TCP sources, its loss can trick the TCP sources to conclude/infer that the underlying (optical) network is congested. Accordingly, TCP reduces sending rate and switches over to either fast retransmission or slow start state. This reaction by TCP is uncalled-for in TCP over OBS networks as the optical network may not be congested during such random burst contention losses. Hence, these losses are to be addressed in order to improve the performance of TCP over OBS networks. Existing work in the literature achieves the above laid objective at the cost of violating the semantics of OBS and/or TCP. Several other works make delay inducing assumptions. In our work, we introduce a new layer, called Adaptation Layer, in between TCP and OBS layers. This layer uses burst retransmission to mitigate the effect of burst loss due to contention on TCP by leveraging the difference between round trip times of TCP and OBS. We achieve our objective with the added advantage of maintaining the semantics of the layers intact.     

Performance evaluation of high speed TCP over optical burst switching networks

Study of TCP performance over OBS networks has been an important problem of research lately and it was found that due to the congestion control mechanism of TCP and the inherent bursty losses in the Optical Burst Switching (OBS) network, the throughput of TCP connections degrade. On the other hand, High Speed TCP (HSTCP) was proposed as an alternative to the use of TCP in high bandwidth-delay product networks. HSTCP aggressively increases the congestion window used in TCP, when the available bandwidth is high and decreases the window cautiously in response to a congestion event. In this work, we make a thorough simulation study of HSTCP over OBS networks. While the earlier works in the literature used a linear chain of nodes as the network topology for the simulation, we use the popular 14-node NSFNET topology that represents an arbitrary mesh network in our study. We also study the performance of HSTCP over OBS for different bandwidths of access networks. We use two different cases for simulations where in the first HSTCP connections are routed on disjoint paths while in the second they contend for resources in the network links. These cases of simulations along with the mesh topology help us clearly distinguish between the congestion and contention losses in the OBS network and their effect on HSTCP throughput. For completeness of study, we also simulate TCP traffic over OBS networks in all these cases and compare its throughput with that of HSTCP. We observe that irrespective of the access network bandwidth and the burst loss rate in the network, HSTCP outperforms TCP in terms of the throughput and robustness against multiple burst losses up to the expected theoretical burst loss probability of 10⁻³.     

A stochastic model for the behavior of multiple TCP NewReno sources over optical burst switching network

This work proposes a stochastic model to characterize the transmission control protocol (TCP) over optical burst switching (OBS) networks which helps to understand the interaction between the congestion control mechanism of TCP and the characteristic bursty losses in the OBS network. We derive the steady-state throughput of a TCP NewReno source by modeling it as a Markov chain and the OBS network as an open queueing network with rejection blocking. We model all the phases in the evolution of TCP congestion window and evaluate the number of packets sent and time spent in different states of TCP. We model the mixed assembly process, burst assembler and disassembler modules, and the core network using queueing theory and compute the burst loss probability and end-to-end delay in the network. We derive expression for the throughput of a TCP source by solving the models developed for the source and the network with a set of fixed-point equations. To evaluate the impact of a burst loss on each TCP flow accurately, we define the burst as a composition of per-flow-bursts (which is a burst of packets from a single source). Analytical and simulation results validate the model and highlight the importance of accounting for individual phases in the evolution of TCP congestion window.     

OBS网络中的新型竞争解决方案

提出一种解决光突发交换(OBS)网络节点中突发数据包冲突的方案.发生冲突时,在OBS层重传被丢弃突发数据包,然后给出评估这种重传机制丢包率的方法,并与偏射路由策略的性能进行比较,结果表明突发重传机制显著改善了丢包率.可以很好地实现服务质量(QoS)机制.     

Improving TCP performance over optical burst-switched (OBS) networks using forward segment redundancy

Random contentions occur in optical burst-switched (OBS) networks because of one-way signaling and lack of optical buffers. These contentions can occur at low loads and are not necessarily an indication of congestion. The loss caused by them, however, causes TCP at the transport layer to reduce its send rate drastically, which is unnecessary and reduces overall performance. In this paper, we propose forward segment redundancy (FSR), a proactive technique to prevent data loss during random contentions in the optical core. With FSR, redundant TCP segments are appended to each burst at the edge and redundant burst segmentation is implemented in the core, so that when a contention occurs, primarily redundant data are dropped. We develop an analytical throughput model for TCP over OBS with FSR and perform extensive simulations. FSR is found to improve TCP’s performance by an order of magnitude at high loads and by over two times at lower loads.     

TCP-friendly flow control of wireless multimedia using ECN marking

In a wireless network packet losses can be caused not only by network congestion but also by unreliable error-prone wireless links. Therefore, flow control schemes which use packet loss as a congestion measure cannot be directly applicable to a wireless network because there is no way to distinguish congestion losses from wireless losses. In this paper, we extend the so-called TCP-friendly flow control scheme, which was originally developed for the flow control of multimedia flows in a wired IP network environment, to a wireless environment. The main idea behind our scheme is that by using explicit congestion notification (ECN) marking in conjunction with random early detection (RED) queue management scheme intelligently, it is possible that not only the degree of network congestion is notified to multimedia sources explicitly in the form of ECN-marked packet probability but also wireless losses are hidden from multimedia sources. We calculate TCP-friendly rate based on ECN-marked packet probability instead of packet loss probability, thereby effectively eliminating the effect of wireless losses in flow control and thus preventing throughput degradation of multimedia flows travelling through wireless links. In addition, we refine the well-known TCP throughput model which establishes TCP-friendliness of multimedia flows in a way that the refined model provides more accurate throughput estimate of a TCP flow particularly when the number of TCP flows sharing a bottleneck link increases. Through extensive simulations, we show that the proposed scheme indeed improves the quality of the delivered video significantly while maintaining TCP-friendliness in a wireless environment for the case of wireless MPEG-4 video.     

光突发交换网络中的传输控制协议性能

光突发交换(OBS)是IP over WDM核心网络采用的交换技术。在OBS网络中,送往同一边缘节点的IP分组汇聚成传输和交换的基本单元———数据突发(DB),DB丢弃会导致大量IP分组丢失,显著影响传输层的性能。文中分析OBS网络的参数对传输控制协议(TCP)吞吐量和时延的影响。仿真结果表明,DB丢包率越高,TCP性能越差。在低丢包率情况下,随着DB长度的增加,TCP吞吐量和端到端时延明显增加,高丢包率情况下则不明显;随着汇聚周期的增加,TCP吞吐量逐渐下降,端到端时延逐渐增加。     

A dynamic load-aware congestion control scheme in optical burst switching networks

The most important design goal in Optical Burst Switching (OBS) networks is to reduce burst loss resulting from resource contention. Especially, the higher the congestion degree in the network is, the higher the burst loss rate becomes. The burst loss performance can be improved by employing an appropriate congestion control. In this paper, to actively avoid contentions, we propose a dynamic load-aware congestion control scheme that operates based on the highest (called ‘peak load’) of the loads of all links over the path between each pair of ingress and egress nodes in an OBS network. We also propose an algorithm that dynamically determines a load threshold for adjusting burst sending rate, according to the traffic load in a network. Further, a simple signalling method is developed for our proposed congestion control scheme. The proposed scheme aims to (1) reduce the burst loss rate in OBS networks and (2) maintain reasonable throughput and fairness. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme reduces the burst loss rate significantly, compared to existing OBS protocols (with and without congestion control), while maintaining reasonable throughput and fairness. Simulation results also show that our scheme keeps signalling overhead due to congestion control at a low level.     

OBS考虑优先级的突发包碎片可控合并重传算法

为了降低光突发交换网络中突发包的丢失率、降低网络路径的阻塞率、减小突发包冲突的概率,提出了考虑优先级的突发包碎片可控合并重传算法。当网络中数据通信发生冲突时,该算法能根据优先级进行突发包的分片,核心节点将这一信息反馈给边缘节点,边缘节点根据突发碎片的优先级以一定的概率重传被丢弃的突发包分片;同时,针对由于多次重传导致的突发包碎片过多的问题,该算法还按照突发包碎片的优先级顺序进行碎片重组,大大降低了网络的阻塞率。结果表明,相比以往的冲突解决算法,此算法在网络业务繁忙时的数据丢比特率和网络阻塞率方面的改善作用有比较明显的优势。这一结果对光突发交换网络的网络的性能改善方面是有帮助的。     

TCP Window-Based Flow-Oriented Dynamic Assembly Algorithm for OBS Networks

In transport control protocol (TCP) over optical burst switching (OBS) networks, TCP window size and OBS parameters, including assembly period and burst dropping probability, will impact the network performance. In this paper, a parameter window data dropping probability(WDDP), is defined to analyze the impact of the assembly and the burst loss on the network performance in terms of the round trip time and the throughput. To reduce the WDDP without introducing the extra assembly delay penalty, we propose a novel TCP window based flow-oriented assembly algorithm dynamic assembly period (DAP). In the traditional OBS assembly algorithms, the packets with the same destination and class of service (CoS) are assembled into the same burst, i.e., the packets from different sources will be assembled into one burst. In that case, one burst loss will influence multiple TCP sources. In DAP, the packets from one TCP connection are assembled into bursts, which can avoid the above situation. Through comparing the two consecutive burst lengths, DAP can track the variation of TCP window dynamically and update the assembly period for the next assembly. In addition, the ingress node architecture for the flow-oriented assembly is designed. The performance of DAP is evaluated and compared with that of fixed assembly period (FAP) over a single TCP connection and multiple TCP connections. The results show that DAP performs better than FAP at almost the whole range of burst dropping probability.     

ROBS:光突发交换的可靠传输机制

提出了一种新型的光突发交换网络结构模型-可靠光突发交换(ROBS).介绍了该模型的网络结构及基本原理,讨论了在光层上引入的TCP的拥塞控制特性与重传机制.仿真结果显示了突发备份时间(lifetime)、负载率的不同对ROBS网络性能造成的影响.     

A Novel Congestion Detection Scheme in TCP Over OBS Networks

This paper introduces a novel congestion detection scheme for high-bandwidth TCP flows over optical burst switching (OBS) networks, called statistical additive increase multiplicative decrease (SAIMD). SAIMD maintains and analyzes a number of previous round-trip time (RTTs) at the TCP senders in order to identify the confidence with which a packet loss event is due to network congestion. The confidence is derived by positioning short-term RTT in the spectrum of long-term historical RTTs. The derived confidence corresponding to the packet loss is then taken in the developed policy for TCP congestion window adjustment. We will show through extensive simulation that the proposed scheme can effectively solve the false congestion detection problem and significantly outperform the conventional TCP counterparts without losing fairness. The advantages gained in our scheme are at the expense of introducing more overhead in the SAIMD TCP senders. Based on the proposed congestion control algorithm, a throughput model is formulated, and is further verified by simulation results.      

一种改善TCP性能的链路层重传方案

有线网络中TCP拥塞控制机制是建立在网络丢包的基础之上的,所以该机制不能适应无线网络中高误码率造成的无线链路丢包的情况。无线链路层重传技术是改善网络性能因无线信道误码率较高而下降的一项重要措施。文中研究了WCDMA无线网络中链路层重传技术对无线TCP数据传输的影响,比较两种重传方案,通过OPNET仿真技术对其进行仿真比较,得出其中一种更有效的改善TCP传输性能的方案。     

一种改善TCP性能的cdma2000链路层RLP重传方案

在无线数据传输网络中,物理层帧差错率(FER)是影响网络性能的一个主要因素。无线链路层重传技术是改善网络性能因无线信道误码率较高而下降的一项重要措施。本文主要研究cdma2000无线网络中链路层重传技术对无线TCP数据传输的影响,提出一种cdma2000链路层重传方案,并通过OPNET仿真技术对该重传方案进行仿真,验证了该方案能改善TCP数据在cdma2000无线网络中的传输性能。     

OBS网络中突发重传和IP包重传的性能比较

文章分别分析了将基于优先级的突发重传和基于分段的IP包重传方式引入光突发交换(OBS)网络后的性能,并对这两个机制进行了分析比较.通过分析比较发现,采用基于优先级的突发重传可以有效地减少重传次数、所需缓存和重传延迟,提高网络吞吐量,是OBS网络中的一种理想的重传选择方案.