Root cause analysis for long-lived TCP connections

While the applications using the Internet have changed over time, TCP is still the dominating transport protocol that carries over 90% of the total traffic. Throughput is the key performance metric for long TCP connections. The achieved throughput results from the aggregate effects of the network path, the parameters of the TCP end points, and the application on top of TCP. Finding out which of these factors is limiting the throughput of a TCP connection – referred to as TCP root cause analysis – is important for end users that want to understand the origins of their problems, ISPs that need to troubleshoot their network, and application designers that need to know how to interpret the performance of the application. In this paper, we revisit TCP root cause analysis by first demonstrating the weaknesses of a previously proposed flight-based approach. We next discuss in detail the different possible limitations and highlight the need to account for the application behavior durin...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CONEXT
• Authors: Matti Siekkinen, Guillaume Urvoy-Keller, Ernst W. Biersack, Taoufik En-Najjary
• Keywords: Computer Networks, CONEXT 2005, Root Cause Analysis, Tcp Connection, TCP Root Cause