Analytic Evaluation of RED Performance

— End-to-end congestion control mechanisms such as those in TCP are not enough to prevent congestion collapse in the Internet (for starters, not all applications might be willing to use them), and they must be supplemented by control mechanisms inside the network. The IRTF has singled out Random Early Detection (RED) as one queue management scheme recommended for rapid deployment throughout the Internet. However, RED is not a thoroughly understood scheme – witness for example how the recommended parameter settings, or even the various benefits RED is claimed to provide, have changed over the past few years. In this paper, we describe simple analytic models for RED, and use these models to quantify the benefits (or lack thereof) brought about by RED. In particular, we examine the impact of RED on the loss and delay suffered by bursty and less bursty traffic (such as TCP and UDP traffic, respectively). We find that (i) RED does eliminate the higher loss bias against bursty traf�...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Thomas Bonald, Martin May, Jean-Chrysostome Bolot
• Keywords: Bursty Traffic, Communications, Congestion Control Mechanisms, Control Mechanisms, INFOCOM 2000