Optimal Offline TCP Sender Buffer Management Strategy

Abstract

The transmission control protocol (TCP) uses a sliding window in order to enforce flow control. The receiver advertises its available buffer space to the sender, which cannot transmit more data than the advertised space. Transmitted data is first copied from application buffers into TCP buffers and from there it is sent through the network. In this paper we propose a model which characterizes the senderpsilas behavior throughout the duration of a TCP conversation. The model is suitable in the case of powerful, but variably loaded senders, slow receivers, fast connections and moderate amounts of data transmitted. For this model we present an O(nldrlog2n) algorithm which computes the minimum processing time spent by the sender, if the window sizes advertised by the receiver and the senderpsilas load are known in advance. The solution is based on an algorithmic framework for the segment tree data structure, which we introduce in this paper.