Implementation and Performance Evaluation of the re-ECN Protocol

Re-inserted ECN (re-ECN) is a proposed TCP/IP extension that informs the routers on a path about the estimated level of congestion. The re-ECN protocol extends the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) mechanism and reinserts the obtained feedback into the network. This exposure of congestion information is a new economic traffic management mechanism that enables the network to share the available capacity more equally and to police the compliance of congestion control through e. g. a per-user congestion limitation. This paper studies performance implications of the re-ECN mechanism. Our evaluation is based on simulations with an own re-ECN implementation in the Linux TCP/IP stack. Our results also confirm that congestion exposure generally works. But we also show that traffic characteristics such as the round-trip time (RTT), flow sizes, as well as the selection of congestion control algorithms have a significant impact on the congestion exposure information. These non-trivial effect...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ETM
• Authors: Mirja Kühlewind, Michael Scharf
• Keywords: Congestion Control, Congestion Exposure, Economy, ETM 2010, Explicit Congestion Notification