TCP mechanisms for improving the user experience for time-dependent thin-stream applications

—A wide range of Internet-based services that use reliable transport protocols display what we call thin-stream properties. This means that the application sends data with such a low rate that the retransmission mechanisms of the transport protocol are not fully effective [7]. In time-dependent scenarios where the user experience depends on the data delivery latency, packet loss can be devastating for the service quality. In order to reduce application-layer latency when packets are lost, we have implemented modifications to the TCP retransmission mechanisms in the Linux kernel. The changes are only active when thin-stream properties are detected, thus not affecting TCP behaviour when the stream is not thin. In this paper, we show the latency improvements from these thin-stream modifications. We have tested several thin-stream applications like remote terminals (SSH) and audio conferencing (Skype), and we evaluate the user experience with and without the TCP modifications. Our exp...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: LCN
• Authors: Andreas Petlund, Kristian Evensen, Carsten Griwodz, Pål Halvorsen
• Keywords: Computer Networks, LCN 2008, Retransmission Mechanisms, TCP Retransmission Mechanisms, Transport Protocol