Theoretical analysis of the SABUL congestion control algorithm

Several new protocols such as RBUDP, User-Level UDP, Tsunami, and SABUL, have been proposed as alternatives to TCP for high speed data transfer. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of SABUL congestion control algorithm on SABUL performance metrics such as bandwidth utilization, self-fairness, aggressiveness and average packet losses. We propose simple deterministic and stochastic models of SABUL congestion control algorithm and use the models to assess these metrics. Our results explain SABUL throughput oscillations, derive bounds on its aggressiveness/responsiveness, show that SABUL can be self-fair, and identify conditions under which SABUL connections may experience excessive packet losses. This work was sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation grant No. NSF-9901004, DOE SciDAC grant DE-FC02-01ER25484, and IBM Corp. Shared University Research Program.