TICP: Transport Information Collection Protocol

We present and validateTicp, a TCP-friendly reliable transport protocol to collect information from a large number of sources spread over the Internet.Ticp is a stand-alone protocol that can be used by any application requiring the reliable collection of information. It ensures two main functions: (i) the information arrives at the collector entirely and correctly, (ii) the implosion at the collector and the congestion of the network are avoided. The congestion control inTicp is done by having the collector probe the sources at a rate function of network conditions. The probing rate increases and decreases in a way similar to how TCP adapts its congestion window. We implementTicp in ns-2 and validate its performance. In particular, we show how efficientTicp is in quickly and reliably collecting information from a large number of sources, while avoiding network congestion and being fair with competing traffic.