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Congestion Control Architectures, Overlay QoS Related Papers Back to Top

David Harrison, Yong Xia, Shiv Kalyanaraman, Arvind Venkatesan, "A Closed-loop Scheme for Expected Minimum Rate and Weighted Rate Services," submitted, 2002.

Traditionally QoS capabilities have been constructed out of open-loop building blocks such as packet schedulers and traffic conditioners. In this paper, we consider closed-loop techniques to achieve a range of service differentiation capabilities. Our key contribution is the use of Accumulation-based Congestion Control (ACC) as a data-plane building block to provide an expected minimum rate service which is similar to Frame Relay CIR/PIR and DiffServ assured service. A user with a minimum rate expectation can be interpreted as having a non-concave user utility function. Unfortunately in the context of nonlinear optimization, non-concave utility functions are analytically difficult and often result in multiple optimal solutions. Instead of attempting optimization with non-concave objective functions, we demonstrate a meaningful notion of an expected minimum rate by imposing additional constraints on Kellys convex optimization formulated in [14]. Unlike the constraint which simply requires all user allocations to be larger than their respective expected minima, our constraint does not require admission control. The resulting scheme is distributed, requires each control loop to act only on local knowledge and still allows policy-based control over how capacity is allocated during oversubscription. We use ns-2 simulations and Linux implementation experiments to demonstrate that the service performance matches theoretical results. Our scheme does not require Active Queue Management (AQM) at bottlenecks. However, with AQM, we achieve near zero queue with high utilization.

CONFERENCE SUBMISSION { Postscript | PDF }


Yong Xia, David Harrison, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Kishore Ramachandran, Arvind Venkatesan. "An Accumulation-based Congestion Control Model", IEEE International Conference on Communications, Anchorage, Alaska, May 2003.

This paper generalizes the TCP Vegas congestion avoidance mechanism and proposes a model to use {\em accumulation}, buffered packets of a flow inside network routers, as a congestion measure on which a {\em family} of congestion control schemes can be derived. We call this model accumulation-based congestion control (ACC). We use a bit-by-bit fluid model to define the accumulation concept and develop a general control algorithm which includes a {\em set} of control policies. Then we prove its proportional fairness and global stability. The ACC model serves as a reference for packet network implementations. We show that TCP Vegas is one possible scheme which fits into the ACC model. It is well known that Vegas suffers from round trip propagation delay estimation error and reverse path queuing delay. We therefore design a new scheme called Monaco which solves these problems by employing an {\em out-of-band receiver-based} accumulation estimator, with minimal support from network routers. Analysis and simulation comparisons between Vegas and Monaco demonstrate the effectiveness of the Monaco accumulation estimator. We use ns-2 simulations to show that the static and dynamic performance of Monaco matches the theoretic results. One key issue regarding the ACC model in general, i.e., the scalability of router buffer requirement, is discussed.

Postscript | PDF


Yong Xia, David Harrison, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Kishore Ramachandran, Arvind Venkatesan, "Accumulation-based Congestion Control", Submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, January 2003. A short version of this paper was accepted by ICC'03.

This paper generalizes the TCP Vegas congestion avoidance mechanism and proposes a model to use {\em accumulation}, buffered packets of a flow inside network routers, as a congestion measure on which a {\em family} of congestion control schemes can be derived. We call this model accumulation-based congestion control (ACC). We use a bit-by-bit fluid model to define accumulation concept and develop a general control algorithm which includes a {\em set} of control policies. Then we prove its proportional fairness and global stability. The ACC model serves as a reference for packet network implementations. We show that TCP Vegas is one possible scheme which fits into the ACC model. It is well known that Vegas suffers from round trip propagation delay estimation error and reverse path queuing delay. We therefore design a new scheme called Monaco which solves these problems by employing an {\em out-of-band receiver-based} accumulation estimator, with minimal support from network routers. Analysis and simulation comparisons between Vegas and Monaco demonstrate the effectiveness of the Monaco accumulation estimator. We use ns-2 simulations and Linux implementation experiments to show that the static and dynamic performance of Monaco matches the theoretic results. One key issue regarding the ACC model in general, i.e., the scalability of router buffer requirements and a possible solution using a virtual delay queuing mechanism, is discussed and evaluated.

Postscript | PDF


David Harrison, "Edge-to-edge Control: A Congestion Control and Service Differentiation Architecture for the Internet," Ph.D. Dissertation, Computer Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, May 2002.

This dissertation presents Edge-to-edge Control (EC), a new traffic control and service differentiation architecture for the Internet. Unlike traditional QoS architectures which require complex scheduling at bottlenecks, EC requires only that intermediate nodes provide FIFO queuing and a separate class for EC traffic. Consequently, EC places no new implementation or upgrade requirements at bottlenecks, requires no new packet format requirements at the IP-level, and requires no upgrades from end-systems. Instead EC concentrates functionality at internetwork edges where existing or proposed building blocks can be employed for traffic control, measurement, policing, congestion-sensitive admission control, congestion-sensitive pricing, and differentiated services. EC operates by establishing closed-loop regulated traffic trunks between EC edges. This traffic trunking building block is called an EC trunk. EC trunks use congestion avoidance to push congestion back from intermediate network nodes distributing the congestion across EC edges where the smaller congestion problems are handled with more stateful and sophisticated methods. We also propose Riviera, a rate-based congestion avoidance algorithm that implements EC trunks.

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David Harrison, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Sthanunathan Ramakrishnan "Congestion Control as a Building Block for QoS," Student Poster, SIGCOMM 2001, August 2001. Reprinted in Computer Communication Review, Volume 32, Number 1, January 2002.

In this work, we focus on the question: How to provide QoS for private networks in an inter-domain multi-provider environment. Traditional QoS mechanisms like diff-serv, CSFQ require deployment of the QoS mechanisms at every potential bottleneck and also require coordination among ISPs. These complex coordination and deployment issues have inhibited the large scale deployment of QoS mechanisms. Our solution is to use a congestion control algorithm to push back all congestion to the edge (e.g access router) and hence called edge-to-edge control algorithm. Then QoS issues like queueing, bandwidth sharing, packet loss distribution are all pushed to the edge, allowing the core to operate using largely stateless mechanisms.

Postscript | PDF | CCR Web Site | Powerpoint Presentation


Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Raj Jain, Sonia Fahmy, Rohit Goyal, and Bobby Vandalore, "The ERICA Switch Algorithm for ABR Traffic Management in ATM Networks," IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol 8, No 1., February 2000.

We propose an explicit rate indication scheme for congestion avoidance in ATM networks. In this scheme, the network switches monitor their load on each link, determining a load factor, the available capacity, and the number of currently active virtual channels. This information is used to advise the sources about the rates at which they should transmit. The algorithm is designed to achieve efficiency, fairness, controlled queueing delays, and fast transient response. The algorithm is also robust to measurement errors caused due to variation in ABR demand and capacity. We present performance analysis of the scheme using both analytical arguments and simulation results. The scheme is being implemented by several ATM switch manufacturers.

Postscript (1.29 MB | Gzip Compressed Postscript (200 KB) | PDF


TCP Related (Randomization, Rate Control, Modeling, TCP over ADSL): Related Papers Back to Top

K Chandrayana, Y.Xia, B Sikdar and S Kalyanaraman, "A Unified Approach to Network Design and Control with Non-Cooperative Users " - Networks Lab Technical Reoprt, ECSE-NET-2002-1, March 2002.

A lot of research has {\em separately} considered non-cooperative congestion control, fairness, pricing and differentiated services for the Internet. However, a solution to one of the problems may not be applicable to others. This leads to implementational complexities and is one of the major reason why the proposed solutions are not implemented in real networks. This paper motivates the need for a {\em holistic} approach to jointly solve these design problems and proposes a model using an optimization framework for flow control to achieve these objectives. We argue it is possible to handle all of the above problems by using this model, both from the stand points of theoretical analysis and high level implementation issues.

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K. Chandrayana and S. Kalyanaraman, "On Impact of Non-Conformant Flows on a Network of DropTail Gateways," IEEE Globecom 2003, To appear.

In this paper we evaluate rate distributions between competing flows in a network of DropTail queues. Specifically we look at the case when some of the flows are non- conformant or mis-behaving and it's effect on conformant flows. Our results show in a network of DropTail queues mis-behaving flows can have significantly higher bandwidth allocations at the cost of conformant flows. Further this unequal sharing worsens in a multi-bottleneck scenario where conformant flows may consistently timeout. However the distribution of rates improves if RED is used at the bottleneck thus suggesting deployment of RED. In this paper we also look at the fairness from the network's perspective rather then end-user's. As such we propose an analytical model for managing non-conformant or mis-behaving flows by manipulating congestion penalties conveyed to them. We show that this penalty transformation can map a user's utility function, $U_s$, to any objective utility function, $U_{obj}$. These penalty transformation modules can be completely implemented at the edge and can also work with Droptail queues. We have analyzed the framework and evaluated it for both single and multi bottleneck scenarios.

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K. Chandrayana, "New Architectures for Handling Fairness and Congestion Response Conformance in the Internet", Doctoral Candidacy Proposal, ECSE, RPI - May 2003

One of the reasons for the spectacular growth of Internet has been its ability to support different applications. Though TCP has been the favored transport protocol, increasingly these applications have using rate control schemes other than TCP. This flexibility of applications to choose their rate control schemes presents us with problem of {\em protocol non-compliance and fairness}. Traditionally, the network design has coupled the solution of these issues with AQM schemes. However, these AQM schemes are beset with configuration problems and have not been deployed on the Internet. In this thesis we present deployable end-system and edge-system based solutions for protocol compliance and fairness. Specifically, we propose {\em Randomized TCP} an end-system based solution for improving fairness in the network and an {\em Edge based Re-marking framework} for providing protocol compliance and broad range of fairness objectives in the network.

Though TCP has served the Internet community well it is known to suffer from a number of phenomena which limit its effectiveness on a network of Drop Tail queues. The main problems which degrade TCP and network performance are: synchronization of congestion windows, phase effects, bias against bursty traffic and unfairness to flows with higher RTTs. In this thesis we propose an {\em end-system based} solution to some of these problems. Specifically, we propose to introduce randomization into the network by randomizing the sending times of packets in TCP and other similar window based transport protocols. For the TCP case, we call it {\em Randomized TCP}. In the proposed model, packets of window are sent after an interval of $RTT(1 + x)/cwnd$, where {\em cwnd} is the congestion window in packets and {\em x} is a random number drawn from an Uniform distribution on [-1, 1]. Our results show that this randomization breaks the synchronization of flows in the network and consequently improves fairness, reduces burst losses and phase effects.

Though the above proposal works well, its performance is constrained in presence of selfish flows in the network. Specifically, the area of concern is protocol conformance, for e.g. TCP-Friendliness. In the present Internet, the users are free to choose a rate control scheme and act unilaterally to maximize their network usage. The network on the other hand wants to allocate resources impartially or according to some specified criteria (e.g. price, service differentiation etc). However, the selfish behavior of the users might be in direct conflict with the objectives of the network. Though AQM schemes have been proposed to achieve conformance amongst users, they do not {\em always} protect flows from selfish behavior and are constrained by the range of fairness criteria they can provide.

In this thesis we look at ``fairness'' from the network's perspective and focus on managing the distribution of rate allocations. Specifically, we show that by a penalty transformation we can map a user's utility function to any target utility function. These penalty transformation agents can be implemented on the network edges and work with either marking or dropping. This transformation helps enforce protocol conformance and provides flexibility to provide a broad range of fairness criteria on the network. Another advantage of this framework is that it is independent of the buffer management policy deployed on the network, i.e. it works even on a network of Drop Tail queues.

In summary this thesis proposes novel end-system and edge-system based solutions for improving fairness, enforcing congestion response conformance and managing selfish behavior in the Internet.

Candidacy Proposal | Candidacy Presentation


K. Chandrayana, S. Ramakrishnan, B. Sikdar, S. Kalyanaraman, A. Balan, O. Tickoo, ``On Randomizing the Sending Times in TCP and other Window Based Algorithms,'' Submitted, 2002

Current implementations of TCP suffer from performance problems like bias against flows with higher round trip times (RTTs), synchronization of windows, phase effects in flows and correlated losses leading to throughput degradations with Drop Tail queues. In this paper we propose a solution to these issues by introducing randomization into the network through end-to-end congestion control protocols. For the TCP case we call it {\em Randomized TCP}. Instead of sending back-to-back packets, Randomized TCP spaces successive packet transmissions with a time interval $\Delta = RTT(1+x)/cwnd$, where $x$ is a zero mean random number drawn from an Uniform distribution. Randomized TCP, by introducing randomization in the network, reduces synchronization, phase effects and bias against bursty traffic and longer RTT flows, prevalent with current implementations of TCP and Drop Tail Gateways. Our results suggest that by randomizing the sending times we can successfully emulate almost all the beneficial features of RED except congestion avoidance. Moreover, these benefits of randomization can be achieved even when it is partially deployed. We also introduce randomization in Binomial schemes and show performance improvements with Drop Tail queues.

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K. Chandrayana, B. Sikdar and S. Kalyanaraman, ``Comparative Study of TCP Compatible Binomial Congestion Control Schemes,'' Proceedings of IEEE HPSR, Kobe, Japan, May 2002.

Current TCP implementations employ Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD) as the congestion control mechanism. Recently, a new set of schemes called Binomial Congestion Control Schemes (BCCS) were proposed and a section of these schemes is TCP compliant. In this paper we evaluate the performance of these TCP compliant binomial schemes and show through simulations that AIMD performs better than the other BCCS policies in a wide range networking environments. Specifically, we study the performance of these schemes with respect to throughput, fairness, losses, timeouts and self-similarity. We show that the superior performance of AIMD can be attributed to its more conservative attitude in the presence of losses when it reduces its transmission rate much faster than the other schemes. This results in smaller congestion periods thereby reducing the losses and timeouts which in turn increases the throughput and decreases the degree of self-similarity of the traffic. We also evaluated the performance of TCP Compatible BCCS when they compete with TCP flows. It was found that with sufficiently large number of flows, BCCS competes fairly with TCP. However, with a smaller number of flows in the network TCP flows get smaller share of the bottleneck and disproportionately higher losses and timeouts.

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B. Sikdar, K. Chandrayana, K. S. Vastola and S. Kalyanaraman, ``Queue Management Algorithms and Network Traffic Self-Similarity,'' Proceedings of IEEE HPSR, Kobe, Japan, May 2002.

The self-similarity of network traffic has been established in a variety of environments and it is well known that self-similar traffic can lead to larger queueing delays, higher drop rates and extended periods of congestion. In this paper, we investigate the impact of various buffer management algorithms on the self-similarity of network traffic. In this paper we investigate the impact of active and passive queue management policies used at the routers on the self-similarity of TCP traffic. We also propose a modification to the RED algorithm, aimed at reducing the timeouts and exponential backoffs in TCP flows, and show that it can lead to significant reductions in the traffic self-similarity under a wide range of network conditions, as compared to the currently implemented active and passive buffer management policies. We also show that though our techniques are aimed at TCP related causes, it is also effective in reducing the degree of self-similarity in traffic even when application and user level causes are also present, as long as TCP is used as the underlying transport protocol.

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K Chandrayana, B Sikdar and S Kalyanaraman, "Scalable Configuration of RED Queue Parameters" - Proceedings of 2001 IEEE HPSR, Dallas, TX.

Active queue management policies and in particular Random Early Drop (RED) are being pushed as additional mechanisms in Internet routers to control congestion and keep network utilization high. RED's performance is highly dependent on the settings of its control parameters. However, no firm guidelines exist on configuring RED parameters and the current suggestions fail to provide the desired performance scalability. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to configure RED parameters based on evaluating the expected instantaneous length of a $M^x/M/1/K$ queue. We show that by setting the RED parameters $min_{th}$ and $max_{th}$ to lie on either side of this expected queue length, we can ensure that the queue is not underutilized and flows cut their rates before the onset of congestion. This setting also allows the operating point to perform satisfactorily over a wide range of flow counts thereby allowing for a higher degree of scalability. We also show that our proposed mechanism increases the queue goodput, reduces losses and timeouts and increases the fairness when compared to existing guidelines. Our proposals have been verified using extensive simulations.


B. Sikdar, S. Kalyanaraman and K. S. Vastola, "Analytic Models for the Latency and Steady-State Throughput of TCP Tahoe, Reno and SACK," Proceedings of IEEE Globecom, 2001.

Continuing the process of improvements made to TCP through the addition of new algorithms in Tahoe and Reno, TCP SACK aims to provide robustness to TCP in the presence of multiple losses from the same window. In this paper we present analytic models to estimate the latency and steady-state throughput to TCP Tahoe, Reno and SACK and validate our models using both simulations and TCP traces collected from the Internet. In addition to being the first models for the latency of finite Tahoe and SACK flows, our model for the latency of TCP Reno gives a more accurate estimation of the transfer times than existing models. Our models show that under the losses introduced by the droptail queues which dominate most routers in the Internet, current implementations of SACK fail to provide adequate protection against timeouts and a loss of roughly more than half the packets in a round will lead to timeouts. We also show that with independent losses, SACK performs better than Tahoe and Reno and as losses become correlated, Tahoe can outperform both Reno and SACK.

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B. Sikdar, S. Kalyanaraman and K. S. Vastola, "TCP Reno with Random losses: Latency, Throughput and Sensitivity Analysis," Proceedings of IEEE IPCCC, pp. 188-195, Phoenix, AZ, April 2001.

Current models for TCP performance focus mainly on the steady-state throughput of infinite flows, making them inappropriate for the short TCP flows which dominate the transfers over the Internet. In this paper, we present a model for the latency of finite TCP Reno flows with independent losses for which currently no models exist. The proposed model can also estimate the steady-state throughput of long flows. We also present a sensitivity analysis and empirical models which investigate the effects of various factors like loss rates, window limitation, delayed acknowledgments and packet size on TCP latency and quantify and isolate their individual contributions. Our model captures the effect of timeouts and slow start phases which occur anywhere during the transfer and uses a more accurate model for the slow start phase, leading to a more accurate estimation of TCP latencies.

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B. Sikdar, S. Kalyanaraman and K. S. Vastola, "An Integrated Model for the Latency and Steady State Throughput of TCP Connections", Proceedings of IFIP Symposium on Advanced Performance Modeling, Orlando, FL, USA, Nov. 2000.

Most TCP connections in today's Internet transfer data on the order of only a few KBytes. Such TCP transfers are very short and spend most of their time in the slow start phase. Thus the underlying assumptions made by steady-state models cease to hold making them unsuitable for modeling finite flows. In this paper, we we propose an accurate model for estimating the transfer times of TCP flows of arbitrary size. Our model gives a more accurate estimation of the transfer times than those predicted by [CSAn00], which extends the steady state analysis of Padhye et al. [PFTK98] to model finite flows. The main features of out work are the modeling of timeouts and slow start phases which occur anywhere during the transfer and a more accurate model for the evolution of the cwnd in the slow start phase. Additionally, the proposed model can also model the steady state throughput of TCP connections. The model is verified using web based measurements of real life TCP connections. We also introduce an empirical model which allows a better ``feel'' of TCP latency and the nature of its dependence on loss probabilities and window limitation. Finally, the paper investigates the the effect on window limitation and packet size on TCP latency.

Postscript


An expanded version of the above paper will appeared in Performance Evaluation Journal (see below)
B. Sikdar, S. Kalayanaraman and K. S. Vastola, ``An integrated model for the latency and steady state throughput of TCP connections,'' Performance Evaluation, vol. 46, no. 2-3, pp. 139-154, September 2001. GZIPPED Postscript


Shrikrishna Karandikar, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Prasad Bagal, Bob Packer, ``TCP Rate Control,'' Computer Communications Review, Vol 30, No 1, January 2000, pp. 45-58.

This paper presents TCP Rate Control, a new technique for {\bf transparently augmenting end-to-end TCP performance} by controlling the sending rate of a TCP source. The ``rate'' of a TCP source is determined by its window size, the round trip time and the rate of acknowledgments (or acks). TCP rate control controls these aspects by modifying the ack number and receiver window fields in acknowledgments and by modulating the acknowledgment rate. From a performance viewpoint a key benefit of TCP rate control is to avoid adverse performance effects due to packet losses such as reduced goodput due to retransmission and timeout delays, and unfairness or large spread in per-user goodputs. Further, TCP rate control can positively affect performance even if the {\bf bottleneck is non-local} and even if the {\bf end-host TCP implementations are non-conforming}. We demonstrate these aspects through a comparative study with RED and TCP-ECN, and discuss deployment issues. The TCP rate control approach has been implemented and patented by Packeteer Inc.

CCR Web Site | Postscript

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D. Shekhar, H. Qin, S. Kalyanaraman, K. Kidambi, ``Performance Optimization of TCP/IP over Asymmetric Wired and Wireless Links,'' Invited paper at European Wireless 2002, February 2002.

We analyze TCP performance in asymmetric networks, where the throughput significantly depends on the reverse direction and packet loss. We introduce a new operational model called the "AMP model" which, with an understanding of TCP dynamics and buffer management techniques explains the performance effects seen. We apply this model to guide design improvements in buffer management (ack-regulation) and scheduling schemes to achieve performance improvements of an order of magnitude or more. The schemes have been tested through simulation and implementation, and the module driven improvements observed are better than those proposed in earlier literature.

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Ramakrishna Satyavolu, Ketan Duvedi, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "Explicit rate control of TCP applications," ATM_Forum/98-0152R1, February 1998.

This contribution examines different methods of controlling the rate of TCP applications to achieve the goals of fairness, delay control and throughput. The key idea is to use an ATM ABR algorithm like ERICA+ to calculate rate feedback and use new techniques to control TCP sources using the feedback calculated. Specifically we propose two rate-to-window translation schemes for explicit window feedback to TCP and one variant of an acknowledgment bucket scheme (which controls TCP rate by controlling the rate of acknowledgements). These techniques can be applied in ATM edge devices or in Internet routers. We explore the dynamics of TCP traffic under different methods of rate control and show through simulations that our techniques can considerably improve fairness, throughput and end-to-end delay properties of TCP applications.

Postscript (1960KB) | PKzip Compressed Postscript (255KB bytes) | PDF |
gzip Compressed Postscript (255KB) | Text (without figures) (46KB)
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Expanded Tech Report: Postscript

Packeteer, a company that makes TCP rate-control products


Multimedia Issues/Multicast Congestion Control/Peer-to-Peer: Related Papers Back to Top

Ivan V. Bajic, Omesh Tickoo, Anand Balan, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, and John W. Woods, "Integrated end-to-end buffer management and congestion control for scalable video communications," IEEE ICIP'03, Barcelona, Spain, September 2003.

In this paper we present a video communication system that integrates end-to-end buffer management and congestion control at the source with the playout adjustment mechanism at the receiver. While each component of the system has been considered independently in the literature, our focus in this work is their integration. The proposed system exploits the fact that when congestion control is implemented at the source, most of the loss occurs at the source and not within the network. Based on this observation, we design the buffer management to trade off random loss for controlled loss of visually less important data. Frame rate is adjusted at the receiver to maximize the visual quality of the displayed video based on the overall loss. We tested our system with both H.26L and a subband/wavelet video coder, and found that it significantly improves the received video quality in both cases.

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Journal version (under review): PDF


Jiang Li, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``Generalized Multicast Congestion Control,'' Proceedings of 5th COST 264 International Workshop on Network Group Communications (NGC 2003) and ICQT, Munich, Germany, September 2003. Proceedings reprinted in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), LNCS-2816, 2003.

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PDF | NGC Presentation (PPT) | NGC Presentation (PDF)


Yufeng Shan and Shivkumar Kalyanaraman "Overlay Multi-hop FEC scheme for Point-to-Point Video Streaming over Peer-to-Peer Networks", submitted, 2003.

Peer-to-peer networks have become extremely popular to provide data-storage (eg: Napster, Kazaa) or distributed computation facilities (eg: SETI@Home). We are interested in extending the notion of peer-to-peer networks to provide a variety of overlay networking services, i.e. by having peers also provide packet-forwarding capabilities. The performance characteristics (eg: loss, bandwidth, delay) of such a peer-based overlay network is likely to be very different and highly variable compared to the traditional internet end-to-end paths or even traditional managed overlay networks (eg: Akamai) because packets may cross the Internet several times (for each overlay hop!). However, the massive diversity, i.e. multiple peer-based overlay paths (eg: 100s of peer-to-peer overlay paths) harnessed could compensate for the performance variability of any one path. In addition, lightweight support at intermediate nodes can improve the single path performance. In this paper, we focus on the latter problem, i.e. providing lightweight support at selected intermediate peer forwarding nodes to achieve dramatically increased error resilience on a single peer-based path for point-to-point (not multicast!) video-streaming applications. Unlike traditional error correction that relies on end-to-end ARQ or FEC based upon the end-to-end error characteristics of the network path, our proposed scheme is a flexible scheme that also considers the error characteristics of each overlay hop. However, our scheme is not a heavyweight hop-by-hop error resilience scheme (like X.25); we segment the end-to-end overlay path into maximal sized "segments" and provide error resilience between the overlay nodes (i.e. peers or hosts) of those segments. Therefore we call our scheme an "overlay multi-hop FEC" (OM-FEC) scheme. Architecturally, this flexible design lies in between the end-to-end and hop-by-hop paradigms, and we argue that it is well suited to peer-based overlay networks. No support is expected from traditional Internet routers. We evaluate our work in two ways: simulations and real-world implementation on the worldwide Planetlab infrastructure using a real video streaming application. Both these evaluations confirm intuition, i.e., providing lightweight, and flexible multi-hop segment-based FEC can dramatically outperform a naive pure end-to-end strategy, and can be much more efficient than a heavyweight naive hop-by-hop resilience strategy.

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Yufeng Shan and Shivkumar Kalyanaraman "Hybrid Video Downloading/Streaming Over Peer-to-Peer Networks", International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), Vol II, pp 665 - 668, Baltimore, MD, July 2003

Peer-to-peer based multimedia delivery is becoming increasingly more important in today's networks. Using a peer-to-peer network to assist video streaming is a topic of considerable interest. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid video downloading/streaming scheme (HDS) that efficiently integrates traditional client/server based video streaming and peer-to-peer based media distribution. Furthermore, we propose a receiver-driven algorithm to coordinate the downloading and streaming modes; and control the state transitions between these modes. We have performed real-world experiments and simulations to validate our concept. These results show that our proposed scheme greatly increases the availability of video content on the receiver side and simultaneously reduces the server load significantly.

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Anand Balan, Omesh Tickoo, Ivan Bajic, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, John Woods, ``Integrated Buffer Management and Congestion Control for Video Streaming,'' submitted for publication, 2002.

In this paper we address the issue of efficient multimedia streaming by integrating an intelligent buffer management scheme with the congestion control scheme at the source. The scheme exploits the fact that most of the transmission losses actually occur at the source and not in the network. An intelligent transmission scheme can take advantage of this fact and thus control exactly what data is dropped in response to network congestion. The integrated model uses priority information from the encoder and network information from the congestion scheme and drops low priority packets and sends the most important packets in the available bandwidth. The packets are dropped when the source transmission buffer length exceeds a minimum threshold. This scheme ensures that the media transmitted has the highest possible quality under the given network conditions using a given coding scheme. This paper also presents a randomized transmission scheme as part of the integrated model to reduce the jitter and burst losses in the multimedia transmissions.

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Jiang Li, ``End-to-End Multicast Congestion Control and Avoidance,'' Ph.D. Dissertation, August 2003.

TBA...

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Jiang Li, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``Using Average Attenuation Factor to Locate the Most Congested Path for Multicast Congestion Control,'' submitted, 2003.

A typical method to perform single-rate multicast congestion control is for the source to adapt the sending rate to the most congested path. In previous research, TCP throughput formula is used to estimate the expected throughput of all paths for locating the most congested one. In order to measure RTT used in the formula, the source needs to exchange packets with every receiver. In sequence, there can be feedback implosion. In this article, we try to solve this problem by proposing a new method to locate the most congested path, where the source only needs to send packets. In this new method, the average attenuation factor (AAF) (of throughput) is measured for each path in the multicast tree, and the path with the highest AAF is considered as the most congested. AAF describes how much and how often the input of a path is attenuated on its route. Its formal definition is presented as a part of this paper. By simulations, we verify the properties of AAF and show the effectiveness of our proposed method as well. Using AAF to locate the most congested path can be used as a building block in multicast congestion control. Once the path is located, the source can adjust its sending rate using different policies based on the feedback from the receiver behind this path.

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Jiang Li, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``ORMCC : A Simple And Effective Single-Rate Multicast Congestion Control Scheme,'' submitted work, 2002.

In this article, we propose a new single-rate multicast congestion control scheme called ORMCC based on a new metric, TRAC (Throughput Rate At Congestion). The scheme is simple: states maintained at source and receivers are O(1); only simple computation is required; and there is no need to measure RTTs from all receivers to the source. At the same time, the scheme is TCP-friendly, does not suffer from drop-to-zero problem, and is very effective with feedback suppression. Theoretical analysis of the scheme performance is provided, and simulations have shown that ORMCC outperforms PGMCC and TFMCC under most situations. We have also implemented ORMCC on top of UDP and successfully run it on real systems in Emulab with promising results.

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Jiang Li, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``MCA: An End-to-end Multicast Congestion Avoidance Scheme with Feedback Suppression,'' submitted to Journal of Computer Communications, 2002.

In this paper, we propose MCA, an end-to-end multicast congestion avoidance scheme with feedback suppression. Congestion avoidance is different from congestion control in the sense that our scheme detects and responds to network congestion without necessarily inducing packet loss. Our scheme is a single-rate scheme and operates end-to-end, i.e., it goes at the rate allowed by the worst congested receiver and does not expect packet marking or other support from intermediate nodes. We design it to be robust under both lossless and lossy situations. Congestion is detected at receivers using the concept of ``accumulation'' (the number of buffered bits of a flow inside the network) and simple thresholding techniques proposed in our recent unicast work. For the purposes of representative (the worst congested receiver) selection by the source and feedback suppression, each receiver maintains its Good Throughput Rate At Congestion (G-TRAC) (the product of receiving rate during congestion epochs and (1 - p), where p is congestion occurrence frequency). In this way, receivers do not need to continuously (either densely or sparsely) exchange packets with the sender (e.g. to measure RTT). Therefore, MCA is scalable for large-size groups. We evaluate the design and demonstrate the performance of MCA using detailed ns-2 simulations.

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Jiang Li, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``MCA: A Rate-based End-to-end Multicast Congestion Avoidance Scheme,'' Proceedings of IEEE International Communications Conference (ICC'2002), New York, NY, April 2002.

We propose MCA, a rate-based end-to-end multicast congestion scheme. Congestion avoidance is different from congestion control in the sense that our scheme detects and responds to network congestion without necessarily inducing packet loss. Our scheme is a single-rate scheme and operates end-to-end, i.e., it goes at the rate allowed by the worst congested receiver and does not expect packet marking or other support from intermediate bottlenecks. Congestion is detected autonomously at receivers using the concept of "accumulation" and simple thresholding techniques proposed in our recent unicast work. Congestion feedback to senders can be in the form of single-bit congestion indication (CIs) or as a multi-bit output rate measure. The feedback is sparse in the sense that at most one feedback is generated per measurement period (unlike multiple loss indications generated during packet loss). The source implements two key blocks: a filtering block to discriminate between competing feedback from receivers, and a congestion response block which implements a rate-increase/decrease policy. The two different feedback models (bit-based or explicit rate-based) leads to two different schemes: bit-based and explicit rate-based schemes. Simulation results show that both schemes avoid the drop-to-zero problem and are fair with unicast congestion avoidance schemes.

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Puneet Thapliyal, Sidhartha, Jiang Li, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``LE-SBCC: Loss-Event oriented Source-based Multicast Congestion Control,'' Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Vol. 17, No. 2/3, 2002.

We propose an end-to-end single-rate source-based multicast congestion control scheme (LE-SBCC) for reliable or unreliable multicast transport protocols. It addresses key issues such as drop-to-zero issues, TCP friendliness and RTT estimation. The scheme consists of a cascaded set of filters and a rate adaptation policy module (AIMD or TFRC) which transform the multicast tree to appear like a unicast path for the purposes of congestion control. The scheme is not self-clocked but acts upon a stream of loss indications (LIs), which are filtered to get a stream of loss events (LEs) (at most one per RTT per receiver). This LE stream is further filtered to extract the maximum LEs from any one receiver, which results in at most one rate-reduction per RTT. A range of results (simulation and experimental) is presented and compared against the mathematical model of the scheme components.

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Neelkanth Natu, Priya Rajagopal, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``GSC: A Generic Source-based Congestion Control Algorithm for Reliable Multicast,'' Journal of Computer Communications, Vol 24, No. 5-6, March 15th 2001, pp. 575-589.

This paper presents a simple, generic source-based end-to-end multicast congestion control (GSC) algorithm for reliable multicast transport (RMT) protocols. The algorithm is completely implemented at the source and leverages the reverse control information flow in RMT protocols like PGM or RMTP. Specifically, it does not introduce any new control traffic or new fields in RMT protocol headers. It addresses the drop-to-zero problem in limited cases by introducing a robust, adaptive time-filter based upon RTT estimates collected by observing NAK traffic. This solution allows it to be very adaptive to congestion situation changes in any part of the tree. The algorithm is friendly to TCP in terms of competition for bandwidth shares. The scheme has minimal control traffic requirements and weak RTT estimation requirements which allows a large deployment space including multi-sender multicast and combination with receiver-based schemes.

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Puneet Thapliyal, Sidhartha, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``Source Based Multicast Congestion Control,'' NGC'2000, Stanford, CA, November 2000 (Poster)

Congestion control is a key requirement for reliable multicast transport (RMT) protocols. We have recently developed a purely source-based scheme (GSC) which requires no receiver/network support. This paper extends that work to handle high degrees of multiplexing and reasonably large receiver sets and demonstrates the TCP friendliness of the scheme.

Abstract (PS) | Summary (PS) | NGC site | Poster Slides (PPT)


Network Management: Back to Top

Hema Tahilramani Kaur, Shiv Kalyanaraman, Andreas Weiss, Shifalika Kanwar, Ayesha Gandhi, ``BANANAS: An Evolutionary Framework for Explicit and Multipath Routing in the Internet,'' SIGCOMM Future Directions on Network Architectures (FDNA) Workshop, Karlsruhe, Germany, August 2003.

Today the Internet offers a single path between end-systems even though it intrinsically has a large multiplicity of paths. This paper proposes an evolutionary architectural framework ``BANANAS'' aimed at simplifying the introduction of multipath routing in the Internet. The framework starts with the observation that a path can be encoded as a short hash (``PathID'') of a sequence of globally known identifiers. The PathID therefore has global significance (unlike MPLS or ATM labels). This property allows multipath capable nodes to {\em autonomously} compute PathIDs in a partially upgraded network without requiring an explicit signaling protocol for path setup. We show that this framework allows the introduction of sophisticated explicit routing and multipath capabilities within the context of widely deployed connectionless routing protocols (e.g. OSPF, IS-IS, BGP) or overlay networks. We establish these characteristics through the development of PathID encoding and route-computation schemes. The BANANAS framework also allows considerable flexibility in terms of architectural function placement and complexity management. To illustrate this feature, we develop an efficient variable-length hashing scheme that moves control-plane complexity and state overheads to network edges, allowing a very simple interior node design. All the schemes have been evaluated using both sizable SSFNet simulations and Linux/Zebra implementation evaluated on Utah's Emulab testbed facility.

Postscript (older version) | PDF (latest) | SIGCOMM FDNA (Aug 2003) Powerpoint (PPT) Slides | Paper Summary & Highlights (REAL AUDIO | MP3)



Garrett Yaun, Christopher D. Carothers, and Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "Large-Scale TCP Models Using Optimistic Parallel Simulation", In Proceedings of the 17th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS '03). Awarded the BEST PAPER in PADS'03.

Internet data traffic is doubling each year, yet bandwidth does not appear to be growing as fast as expected and thus short falls in available bandwidth, particularly at the ``last mile'' may result. To address these bandwidth allocation and congestion problems, researchers are proposing new overlay networks that provide a high quality of service and a near lossless guarantee. However, the central question raised by these new services is what impact will they have in the large? To address these and other network engineering research questions, high-performance simulation tools are required. However, to date, optimistic techniques have been viewed as operating outside of the performance envelope for Internet protocols, such as TCP, OSPF and BGP.

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David Bauer, Garrett R. Yaun, Christopher D. Carothers, Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "A Platform for Large-Scale Network Performance Analysis", submitted, 2003.

Performance analysis techniques are fundamental to aid the process of large-scale protocol design and network operations. There has been a tremendous explosion in the variety of tools and platforms available (eg: ns-2, SSFNet, Click Router toolkit, Emulab, Planetlab). However, we still look at the sample results obtained from such tools with skepticism because they are isolated (potentially random) and may not be representative of the real-world. The first issue (random isolated results) can be addressed by large-scale experiment design techniques that extract maximum information and confidence from a minimum number of carefully designed experiments. Such techniques can be used to find ``good'' results fast to guide either incremental protocol design or operational parameter tuning. The second issue (representativeness) is more sticky and relates to formulating benchmarks. In this paper, we explore the former case, i.e. large-scale experiment design and black-box optimization (i.e. large-dimensional parameter state space search). We propose a new platform ROSS.Net that combines large-scale network simulation with large-scale experiment design and XML interfaces to data sets (eg: Rocketfuel, CAIDA) and models (traffic, topology etc). This is a step towards the broader problem of understanding meta-simulation methodology, and speculate how we could integrate these tools with testbeds like Emulab and Planetlab. Examples of large-scale simulations (routing, TCP, multicast) and experiment design are presented.

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David Bauer, Garrett R. Yaun, Christopher D. Carothers, Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "ROSS.Net: Optimistic Parallel Simulation Framework for Large-Scale Internet Models", To appear in the Proceedings of Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), 2003.

ROSS.Net brings together the four major areas of networking research: network modeling, simulation, measurement and protocol design. ROSS.Net is a tool for computing large scale design of experiments through components such as a discrete-event simulation engine, default and extensible model designs, and a state of the art XML interface. ROSS.Net reads in predefined descriptions of network topologies and traffic scenarios which allows for in-depth analysis and insight into emerging feature interactions, cascading failures and protocol stability in a variety of situations. Developers will be able to design and implement their own protocol designs, network topologies and modeling scenarios, as well as implement existing platforms within the ROSS.Net platform. Also using ROSS.Net, designers are able to create experiments with varying levels of granularity, allowing for the highest-degree of scalability.

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T. Ye, S. Kalyanaraman, ``A Unified Search Framework for Large-scale Black-box Optimization,'' Submitted for publication.

The parameter configuration of a network protocol can be formulated as a black-box optimization problem with network simulation evaluating the performance of the black-box, i.e., the network. This paper proposes a unified search framework (USF) to handle such large-scale black-box optimization problems. The framework is designed to provides a generalized platform on which specifically tailored optimization algorithms can be constructed easily for various types of problems. Therefore, it can be applied to the configuration of different network protocols. In the USF, various samplers are provided as basic building blocks and each of them implements a certain search technique. For a specific problem, a selection of samplers can be used to construct an appropriate search algorithm. These samplers are run in parallel and coordinated with various type of memories which selectively store the samples generated by samplers. The USF also include a resource management mechanism, which can manage parallel computing devices, for example, a network of workstations, and allocate the available computing resources to samplers according to the predefined allocation strategy. The benchmark tests are presented in this paper to demonstrate the flexibility and advantages of the USF.

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Garrett R. Yaun, Harshad L. Bhutada, Christopher D. Carothers, Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "Large-Scale Network Simulation Techniques: Examples of TCP and OSPF Models", submitted to Computer Communication Review, 2003.

Simulation of large-scale networks remains to be a challenge, although various network simulators are in place. In this paper, we identify fundamental issues for large-scale network simulation, and propose new techniques that address them. First, we exploit optimistic parallel simulation techniques to enable fast execution on inexpensive hyper-threaded, multiprocessor systems. Second, we provide a compact, light-weight implementation framework that greatly reduces amount of state required to simulate large-scale network models. Based on the proposed techniques, we provide sample simulation models for two networking protocols: OSPF and TCP. We implement these models in a simulation environment ROSSNet, which is an extension to the previously developed optimistic simulator ROSS. We perform validation experiments for TCP and OSPF, present performance results of our techniques by simulating OSPF and TCP on a large and realistic topology, such as AT\&T's US network based on Rocketfuel data. The end result of these innovations is that we are able to simulate million node network topologies using commercial off-the-shelf hyper-threaded multiprocessor systems costing less than $7000 USD, and consumes less than 1.4GB of RAM in total.

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T. Ye, S. Kalyanaraman, ``A Recursive Random Search Algorithm for Large-Scale Network Parameter Configuration,'' To Appear in SIGMETRICS'2003, San Diego, California, June 2003.

Parameter configuration is a common procedure used in large-scale network protocols to support multiple operational goals. This problem can be formulated as a black-box optimization problem and solved with an efficient search algorithm. This paper proposes a new heuristic search algorithm, Recursive Random Search(RRS), for large-scale network parameter optimization. The RRS algorithm is based on the initial high-efficiency property of random sampling and attempts to maintain this high-efficiency by constantly ``restarting'' random sampling with adjusted sample spaces. Due to its root in random sampling, the RRS algorithm is robust to the effect of random noises in the objective function and is advantageous in optimizing the objective function with negligible parameters. These features are very important for the efficient parameter optimization of network protocols. The performance of RRS is demonstrated with the tests on a suite of benchmark functions. The RRS algorithm has been applied to the adaptive configuration of several network protocols, such as RED, OSPF and BGP. One example application in OSPF routing algorithm is presented.

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Tao Ye, Hema Tahilramani Kaur, Shiv Kalyanaraman, ''Large-Scale Network Parameter Configuration Using An On-line Simulation Framework,'' Submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions of Networking, 2003.

As the Internet infrastructure grows to support a variety of services (eg: VPNs), its legacy protocols (eg: OSPF, BGP) are being overloaded with new functions such as traffic engineering. Today, operators engineer such capabilities through clever, but {\em manual} parameter tuning. In this paper, we propose a back-end support tool for large-scale parameter configuration that is based on efficient parameter state space search techniques and online simulation. The framework is useful when the network protocol performance is sensitive to its parameter settings, and its performance can be reasonably modeled in simulation. In particular, our system imports the network topology, relevant protocol models and latest monitored traffic patterns into a simulation that runs online in a network operations center (NOC). Each simulation evaluates the network performance for a {\em particular setting} of protocol parameters. A recursive random search (RRS) technique is proposed to explore the large-dimensional parameter state space, where each sample point results in a single simulation. In other words, the overall parameter configuration problem is modeled as a {\em ``black-box'' optimization} problem. The goal of RRS is efficiency, i.e., to find {\em ``good''} network protocol configurations for the current traffic conditions {\em quickly}. An important feature of the framework is its flexibility: it allows arbitrary choices in terms of the simulation engines used (eg: ns-2, SSFnet, future scalable simulators etc), network protocols to be simulated (eg: OSPF, BGP, RED, MPLS etc), and in the specification of the optimization objectives. We demonstrate the flexibility and relevance of this framework in three scenarios: joint tuning of the RED buffer management parameters at multiple bottlenecks, traffic engineering using OSPF link weight tuning, and outbound load-balancing of traffic at peering/transit points using BGP LOCAL\_PREF parameter. The first application (RED) is prototyped and evaluated in a Linux-based testbed using SNMP as the configuration interface.

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Tao Ye, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``A Recursive Random Search Algorithm for Black-box Optimization,'' Submitted to Journal of Global Optimization, 2003.

This paper proposes a new heuristic search algorithm, Recursive Random Search(RRS), for black-box optimization problems. Specifically, this algorithm is designed for the dynamical parameter optimization of network protocols which emphasizes on obtaining good solutions within a limited time frame rather than full optimization. The RRS algorithm is based on the initial high-efficiency property of random sampling and attempts to maintain this high-efficiency by constantly ``restarting'' random sampling with adjusted sample spaces. Due to its basis on random sampling, the RRS algorithm is robust to the effect of random noises in the objective function and it performs especially efficiently when handling the objective functions with negligible parameters. These properties have been demonstrated with the tests on a suite of benchmark functions. The RRS algorithm has been successfully applied to the optimal configuration of several network protocols. One application to a network routing algorithm is presented.

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Debashis Basak , Hema Tahilramani Kaur, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``Traffic Engineering Techniques and Algorithms for the Internet,'' RPI Technical Report, 2002.

Traffic engineering broadly relates to optimization of the operational performance of a network. This survey discusses techniques like multi-path routing, traffic splitting, constraint-based routing, path-protection etc. that are used for traffic engineering in contemporary Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks. These techniques can be classified under two broad classes, connectionless and connection-oriented, that dominate the current debate on next-generation routing and traffic engineering in IP networks. The connectionless approach evolves current distance-vector and link-state algorithms, or influences routing metrics. The connection-oriented approach uses signaling and is being used by techniques like Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). Connection-oriented techniques offer a convenient way to monitor, allocate, reroute, and protect resources for a given traffic on an explicit and flexible basis. This survey will examine the core problems, discuss solutions in both connectionless and signaled approach, and point to topics for research and advanced development.

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Tao Ye, Hema Tahilramani Kaur, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Kenneth S. Vastola and Saroj Yadav, "Optimization of OSPF Weights Using On-line Simulation", submitted, 2002.

In this paper, we present an OSPF weights optimization scheme using a general automatic network management framework proposed recently, i.e., an on-line simulation framework. We have chosen the packet drop rate in the network as the optimization metric as it is a good indicator of congestion in the network and also impacts the performance of the underlying applications. The packet drop rate has been formulated in terms of the link parameters, such as bandwidth and buffer space, and the parameters of the traffic demands. A GI/M/1/K queuing model has been used to compute the packet drop probability on a given link. We have also developed a fast recursive random search algorithm to address the issues associated with network optimization problems. The search algorithm has been compared to the local search heuristic of \cite{Thorup} in terms of the number of function evaluations needed to obtain a ``good'' OSPF link weight setting. Our results demonstrate that the recursive random search takes 50-90\% fewer function evaluations to find a ``good'' setting. The amount of improvement depends on the network topology, traffic conditions and optimization metric. We have simulated the proposed OSPF optimization scheme in $ns$\cite{ns} and the results indicated improvements of the order of 30-60\% in the total packet drop rate.

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Tao Ye, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``Adaptive Tuning of RED Using On-line Simulation,'' Proceedings of IEEE GLOBECOM'2002, Taipei, Taiwan, November 2002.

Random Early Detection (RED) is an active queue management mechanism designed to provide better performance than traditional DropTail. However, its parameter setting has proved to be very sensitive to network scenarios and needs constant tuning to achieve ideal performance under varying network conditions. In view of the fact that RED has not been understood well enough for an analytical approach, this paper takes advantage of network simulation techniques and formulates the optimal configuration of RED as a black-box optimization problem. An optimization objective is designed to effectively reflect the tradeoff between utilization and queueing delay. Based on the proposed RED optimization scheme, a general automatic network management system, i.e., on-line simulation system[1], has been used for the on-line tuning of RED under changing network conditions. The proposed approach is empirically validated with simulations and real network experiments. The simulation results show that RED controlled with on-line simulation system is able to stabilize around the expected equilibrium status under varying conditions and maintain high utilization.

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Y.Tao, D. Harrison, B.Sikdar, H. Tahilramani, B.Mo, J.Jiang, S. Kalyanaraman, B. Szymanski, and K. Vastola, ``Network Management and Control using Collaborative On-Line Simulation,'' IEEE International Communications Conference (ICC'2001), Helsinki, Finland, June 2001.

The complex, dynamic nature of the Internet requires scalable, effective network management. This paper proposes a dynamic network management architecture, which performs the parameter tuning of the underlying network protocols based upon collaborative on-line simulation, thus achieving second-order control over the network. This paper presents the various components of the architecture, optimization techniques and a proof-of-concept implementation with the RED algorithm.

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Pricing: Related Papers Back to Top

Murat Yuksel, "Architectures for Congestion-Sensitive Pricing of Network Services," PhD Thesis, CS Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2002.

Several adaptive pricing proposals have been made in the last decade for the Internet. Usually, however, those proposals studied optimal strategies and did not focus on implementation issues. We address implementation issues for adaptive pricing over a single differentiated-services (diff-serv) domain. We propose a new adaptive pricing framework Distributed Dynamic Capacity Contracting (Distributed-DCC), which is deployable over diff-serv architecture of the Internet. Essence of Distributed-DCC is to employ edge-to-edge coordination along with techniques for estimation of user willingness-to-pay (e.g. budget estimation). Particularly, congestion can be detected on an edge-to-edge basis, which enables congestion-sensitive pricing at the edges.

Distributed-DCC is able to provide a range of weighted fairness types (i.e. from max-min to proportional) in rate allocation by using pricing as a tool. The provider can tune a parameter, fairness coefficient, to change fairness of the framework.

To illustrate possibility of congestion-sensitive pricing in the framework, we develop a congestion-sensitive pricing scheme, Edge-to-Edge Pricing (EEP), within the framework. We derive optimal prices for EEP and investigate effects of user's elasticity on these optimal prices.

We also investigate congestion control by pricing, especially in terms of time-scale. We illustrate that control of congestion by pricing requires very small time-scale pricing (i.e. frequent updates to prices), which complicates human involvement into negotiations. To solve this time-scale problem, we propose two pricing architectures: Pricing for Congestion Control (PFCC) and Pricing over Congestion Control (POCC). PFCC uses small time-scale pricing directly for controlling congestion and employs end-placed software/hardware agents which take inputs from human user at large time-scale while negotiating with the provider at small time-scale on behalf of the user. POCC uses an underlying edge-to-edge congestion control mechanism by overlaying pricing on top of it. This way, POCC controls congestion at small time-scales while allowing pricing at time-scales large enough for human involvement. We also illustrate how to adapt Distributed-DCC to these architectures.

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Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "Distributed Dynamic Capacity Contracting: An overlay congestion pricing framework", To appear in Journal of Computer Communications, 2003.

Several congestion pricing proposals have been made in the last decade. Usually, however, those proposals studied optimal strategies and did not focus on implementation issues. Our main contribution in this paper is to address implementation issues for congestion-sensitive pricing over a single differentiated-services (diff-serv) domain. We propose a new congestion-sensitive pricing framework Distributed Dynamic Capacity Contracting (Distributed-DCC), which is able to provide a range of fairness (e.g. max-min, proportional) in rate allocation by using pricing as a tool. We develop a pricing scheme within the Distributed-DCC framework and investigate several issues such as optimality of prices, fairness of rate allocation. We also introduce two pricing architectures based on the manner of using pricing to control congestion: Pricing for Congestion Control (PFCC) and Pricing over Congestion Control (POCC). PFCC uses pricing directly for controlling congestion, whilst POCC uses an underlying edge-to-edge congestion control mechanism by overlaying pricing on top of it. We, then, adapt Distributed-DCC framework to these architectures, and evaluate the two architectures by extensive simulation.

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Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman "Distributed Dynamic Capacity Contracting: A congestion pricing framework for Diff-Serv," Proceedings of IFIP/IEEE International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services (MMNS), Santa Barbara, CA, October 2002.

In order to provide better Quality-of-Service (QoS) in large networks, several congestion pricing proposals have been made in the last decade. Usually, however, those proposals studied optimal strategies and did not focus on implementation issues. Our main contribution in this paper is to address implementation issues for congestion-sensitive pricing over a single domain of the differentiated-services (diff-serv) architecture of the Internet. We propose a new congestion-sensitive pricing framework Distributed Dynamic Capacity Contracting (Distributed-DCC), which is able to provide a range of fairness (e.g. max-min, proportional) in rate allocation by using pricing as a tool. Within the Distributed-DCC framework, we develop an Edge-to-Edge Pricing Scheme (EEP) and present simulation experiments of it.

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Mehdi Aboulfadl, Ritesh Pradhan, Aparna Gupta, and, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "A Spot Pricing Framework To Enable Pricing And Risk Management Of Inter-Domain Assured Bandwidth Services", To appear in Proceedings of Winter Simulation Conference, San Diego, 2002.

In the current bandwidth market, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide guaranteed Internet bandwidth within their domains. However, they are incapable of providing such assurances for data crossing their domain boundaries. In this paper, we present a spot pricing scheme for Internet bandwidth contracts within an ISP domain. These models when implemented at access or exchange points of different ISP domains would provide assured bandwidth for inter-domain traffic. Each contract will constitute a Quality of Service agreement between a customer and a provider within an ISP domain. By appropriately bundling derivative contracts defined on the intra-domain service contracts, a provider will not only be able to give inter-domain Quality of Service assurance, but will be able to add new services and manage its portfolio of services.

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Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Anuj Goel, "Congestion Pricing Overlaid on Edge-to-Edge Congestion Control", Proceedings of ICC 2003, Anchorage, AK, May, 2003.

One of the biggest obstacles for implementing congestion pricing is the pricing time-scale. The Internet traffic is highly variant and hard to control without a mechanism that operates on very low time-scales, i.e. on the order of round-trip-times (RTTs). However, pricing naturally operates on very large time-scales because of human involvement. So, in order to put tight control on congestion through pricing, new implementation methods and architectures are needed for congestion pricing. In order to solve this problem, we propose a novel approach Pricing over Congestion Control (POCC). The essence of POCC is to overlay congestion pricing on top of an underlying congestion control scheme which enforces a much tighter control than pricing. This way congestion in the interior network is controlled very tightly, while pricing is done at time-scales large enough to incorporate human involvement. %We investigate the problems raised within such an overlay architecture and provide solutions to them. We particularly focus on diff-serv and use edge-to-edge congestion control and edge-to-edge pricing techniques to illustrate POCC ideas in simulation.

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Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman "Elasticity Considerations for Optimal Pricing of Networks", Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Computer Communications (ISCC), Antalya, Turkey, July 2003.

Static optimization of networks by pricing has attracted significant attention over the last decade. These studies assumed concave utility functions for users and derived optimal pricing strategies for the network provider. In this paper, we consider effect of user's elasticity to price and bandwidth on optimality of pricing. We first derive optimal pricing strategy for the case of logarithmic user utilities. Then, we investigate two types of elasticity for users: Demand-price elasticity and utility-bandwidth elasticity. By incorporating these two elasticities, we develop a non-logarithmic utility function for users. Finally, we derive an optimal pricing strategy for the non-logarithmic user utilities and illustrate that pricing strategy should be more conservative when the elasticities increase.

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Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman "Pricing Granularity for Congestion-Sensitive Pricing", Proceedings of IEEE International Symposium on Computer Communications (ISCC), Antalya, Turkey, July 2003.

One of the key issues for implementing congestion pricing is the pricing granularity (i.e. pricing interval or time-scale). The Internet traffic is highly variant and hard to control without a mechanism that operates on very low time-scales, i.e. on the order of round-trip-times (RTTs). However, pricing naturally operates on very large time-scales because of human involvement. Moreover, structure of wide-area networks does not allow frequent price updates for many reasons, such as RTTs are very large for some cases. In this paper, we investigate the issue of pricing granularity, identify problems, and propose solutions.

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Extended version: "Effect of Pricing Intervals on Congestion-Sensitivity of Network Prices", Submitted to Telecommunication Systems, 2003. PDF


Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman "A Strategy for Implementing Smart Market Pricing Scheme on Diff-Serv," Proceedings of GLOBECOM, 2002, Taipei, Taiwan, Nov 2002.

In this paper we present a baseline implementation strategy for the well-known Smart Market pricing scheme on diff-serv. Our strategy tries to violate Smart Market's theoretically defined properties as less as possible. In order to suit diff-serv framework, we propose ways of focusing Smart Market's complex operations at the edges while keeping the interior simple. Based on the proposed implementation strategy, we develop packet-based simulation of Smart Market. By simulation, we then investigate Smart Market's performance in terms of stability, fairness, and service differentiation on UDP and TCP traffic. We also look at importance of packet sorting (i.e. sorting of packets at routers according to their bids as proposed in Smart Market) in Smart Market's performance. By several simulations, we find that packet sorting does not really improve the performance for all the three metrics (stability, fairness, and service differentiation). So, it is not necessary to implement packet sorting, which significantly reduces necessary router upgrades for Smart Market's possible deployment.

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Gurjeet S. Arora, Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Thiagarajan Ravichandran, Aparna Gupta, "Price Discovery at Network Edges," Proceedings of International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS), July 2002.

Congestion-sensitive pricing for providing better than best effort service has received significant attention in the last decade. In this paper we identify a robust parameter for capturing congestion conditions in an edge-to-edge framework and propose a family of adaptive pricing schemes for premium network services. The parameter is the ratio of two values: Edge queue and estimated edge-to-edge capacity. By coordination between edge routers, both of the values are available at the ingress point in an edge-to-edge framework. Thus, the pricing schemes deployable. Based on the identified parameter, we propose a new adaptive pricing framework, Price Discovery. Based on the Price Discovery framework and the identified pricing parameter, we develop and analyze four pricing schemes. We compare the pricing schemes, and select the best one in performance. We identify stability conditions for the best scheme. This is followed by evaluation of the best pricing scheme with extensive simulations of various scenarios.

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Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "Simulating the Smart Market Pricing Scheme on Differentiated-Services Architecture," Communication Networks and Distributed Systems Modeling and Simulation Conference (CNDS part of Western MultiConference), Phoenix, AZ, 2001.

Dynamic pricing techniques attracted significant attention as tools to implement better resource sharing, and address the issue of congestion in the Internet. Among the pricing schemes, the "smart market" is a purely congestion-sensitive scheme, which makes it a basis for comparing new pricing schemes. However, there are significant implementation challenges in this scheme. We investigate these issues and come up with an implementation strategy in the differentiated-services architecture. This strategy involves certain changes to the scheme and limitations on the traffic types. This paper reports our implementation strategy, scheme changes, and simulation results illustrating the performance of the smart market scheme.

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Ranjeeta Sinha, Murat Yuksel, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, T. Ravichandran, "A Comparative Evaluation of Internet Pricing Models: Smart Markets and Dynamic Capacity Contracting," The 10th Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (WITS'2000), Brisbane, Australia, December 2000.

Internet pricing is receiving increased attention in industry and academia. In this paper, we report the results of comparing two Internet pricing models. Using simulation techniques, we evaluate the technical and economic efficiencies of the Smart Market model proposed by MacKie-Mason & Varian (1993) and compare it with Dynamic Capacity Contracting, a pricing scheme that we have developed. Dynamic Capacity Contracting is a congestion-sensitive pricing model implementable in the differentiated services architecture of the Internet. The central idea of congestion-sensitive pricing is that, based on congestion monitoring mechanisms, a network could raise prices and vary contract terms dynamically. Our results indicate that while the smart market model achieves a higher economic efficiency, it results in poor technical performance of the network. On the other hand, the dynamic contracting model achieves a better balance of economic and technical efficiencies. We discuss the implications of our work and identify future research directions.

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Differentiated Services/TCP-Friendly Marker Work: Related Papers Back to Top

S. Raghunath, S. Kalyanaraman, "Statistical Point-to-Set Edge-based Quality of Service Assurances", QoFIS 2003, Stockholm, Sweden, October 2003.

In this paper we propose an edge-based quality of service architecture aimed at site-to-site private networks over the Internet. We extend the traditional point-to-point service model to a point-to-set service model, assuming a finite, bounded set of destination sites. Instead of provisioning point-to-point links between a source and its set of destinations, a point-to-set service allows the user to have an allocated bandwidth, which could be flexibly assigned to traffic going toward any destination within the set. The proposed point-to-set service provides low loss rates and flexibility to users while allowing providers to obtain multiplexing gains by employing a probabilistic admission control test. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the utility of deploying such a model.

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Satish Raghunath, "Edge-based Services for Quality of Service Guarantees in the Internet", PhD Candidacy Document, ECSE Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 2003.

We examine a range of edge-based services that can help provide Quality of Service assurances to flows over the Internet. The main theme of these solutions is the approach of keeping the network core simple and resorting to knowledge of traffic statistics to make decisions at the network edge.
The challenges facing QoS provisioning in the next generation Internet involve building simple solutions to provide a priori assurances while being able to exploit statistical multiplexing gains. In this thesis we consider two important aspects of this problem: a) Expanding the scope of QoS beyond point-to-point assurances to point-to-multipoint services; b) Decoupling the computation of QoS assurances from instantaneous traffic characteristics.
Traditional QoS models have concentrated on point-to-point models. However, customer networks frequently need assurances toward multiple destination sites. By expanding the spatial granularity of QoS assurances, we eliminate the need to provision point-to-point links for each source-destination pair while still providing statistical assurances on QoS. Since our architecture is completely edge-based, it is easily deployed without any changes to the network core. In order to provide a priori assurances with such an edge-based architecture we build an analytical framework that allows us to compute QoS metrics without needing to know the exact nature of number of the flows in the system. Thus our framework allows computing QoS assurances given just a topology and routing scheme.
The highpoint of the proposed architecture is the simple edge-based admission control algorithm that is evolved to achieve these goals. By introducing simple constraints on the leaky-bucket parameters of the flows admitted into the system, we demonstrate that bounds on edge-to-edge delay can be obtained. In summary, the contribution of this thesis in building a new edge-based architecture providing {\em a priori} QoS assurances with an enhanced spatial granularity.

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Satish Raghunath, Kartikeya Chandrayana, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, ``Edge-Based QoS Provisioning for Point-to-Set Assured Services,'' ICC 2002, New York NY

In this paper we propose an edge-based quality of service (QoS) architecture aimed at site-to-site private networks over the Internet. We extend the traditional point-to-point service model to a point-to-set service model, assuming a finite, bounded set of destination sites. A point-to-set service allows a user to have a pool of premium tokens, which could be flexibly assigned to traffic going towards any destination within the set. The proposed point-to-set service provides statistical assurances and flexibility to users while allowing providers to obtain multiplexing gains. To realize the point-to-set service model, we introduce edge-based dynamic bandwidth tracking and provisioning schemes. The tracking algorithm predicts demand towards a given destination edge. This information is used to efficiently allocate bandwidth towards the destinations in the set. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the merits of the proposed architecture in terms of cost savings to the customer and efficient resource utilization to the provider.

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G.L. Monoco, F. Azeem, S. Kalyanaraman, Y.Xia, ``TCP-Friendly Marking for Scalable Best-Effort Services on the Internet,'' Computer Communication Review (CCR), Volume 31, Number 5, October 2001.

This paper proposes the use of TCP-aware network-based packet marking, which in conjunction with differential packet dropping, is a powerful way to scale the performance of buffer management for best-effort services on the Internet. In particular, we extend the notion of ``TCP-Friendly'' packet marking, proposed recently by us, and apply it to improve the performance of traditional best-effort services. The TCP-aware use of deterministic packet marking at the enterprise edge allows us to protect selected TCP packets from suffering loss, thus significantly reducing the total number of timeouts and avoiding the resulting service degradation. In particular, we protect TCP sessions with very small windows, disperse packet loss across a given window, and protect retransmitted packets from encountering loss. We show baseline results which illustrate that the performance gains are considerable (orders of magnitude) when compared to stateful packet dropping algorithms like FRED, and even when TCP SACK implementations are employed. The scheme has been implemented in Linux 2.2.10, and all the results are based upon experimental data.

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F. Azeem, A. Rao, S. Kalyanaraman, ``A TCP-Friendly Traffic Marker for IP Differentiated Services,'' IwQoS'2000, Pittsburg, PA, June 2000.

The differentiated services architecture allows the provision of ``better-than-best-effort'' services in the Internet. However, the performance of legacy TCP applications over differentiated services is still influenced by bursty packet loss behavior. This paper proposes the use of TCP-friendly building blocks in the diff-serv architecture, and in particular, a TCP-friendly traffic marker to enhance TCP performance over assured service. We present the marker design and resulting performance improvements in terms of improved predictability of service, reduced provisioning requirements, better fairness and fewer TCP timeouts. Though the marker improves assured service performance predictability compared to a simple token bucket marker, the performance is still dependent to some extent on TCP dynamics.

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Related IETF Internet Draft: draft-azeem-tcpfriendly-diffserv-00.txt : In Text


S. Kalyanaraman, D. Harrison, S. Arora, K. Wanglee, G. Guarriello, "A one-bit feedback enhanced differentiated services architecture," Internet Draft, draft-shivkuma-ecn-diffserv-00.txt, March 1998.

This document proposes the use of one bit in the DS-byte to facilitate ECN-type control in the differentiated services architecture. Specifically during periods of congestion along a flow's path (indicated using the one-bit mechanism), the out-of- profile packets of the flow (packets for which the "In profile" bit is cleared) can be either delayed or dropped by the ingress network edge routers. This scheme would allow interior routers to preserve their resources for processing in-profile packets during congestion and guard against certain types of denial-of-service attacks. The proposed mechanism could also be used to build differentiated services networks with lower average delay, and aid the implementation of congestion-based pricing schemes in such architectures. The mechanism interoperates well with the baseline differentiated services architecture and can also interoperate with ECN-TCP and future ECN-enabled transports/applications. Further, the ECN-type flow control can be deployed within a differentiated services network even if end-to-end ECN support is unavailable, allowing a quick migration path.

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Control-theoretic Work: Related Papers Back to Top

P.F. Quet, B. Ataslar, A. Iftar, H. Ozbay, T.Kang, S. Kalyanaraman, ``Robust Rate-Based Controllers for High Speed Networks: The Case of Uncertain Time-varying Multiple Time delays,'' Automatica Journal, Vol. 38, 2002, pp. 917-928.

An H-infinity based robust controller is designed for a rate-feedback flow-control problem in single-bottleneck data-communication networks. The controller is robust to uncertain time-varying multiple time-delays in different channels. The controller forces the queue length at the bottleneck node to the desired steady-state value asymptotically and also satisfies a weighted fairness condition. Lower bounds for stability margins for uncertainty in the time-delays and for the rate of change of the time-delays are derived. A number of simulations are included to demonstrate the time-domain performance of the controller. Trade offs between robustness and time-domain performance are also discussed.

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P.F. Quet, S. Ramakrishnan, H. Ozbay, S. Kalyanaraman, ``On the H-infinity Controller Design for Congestion Control with a Capacity Predictor,'' Proceedings of the Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), December 2001, Orlando FL.

In this paper, we investigate the use of capacity information in the H-infinity controller design for rate-based flow control in high-speed networks for the case of a single bottleneck node and a single queue. In the previous works in this line of research, it was assumed that the controller has access to queue information, and robust controllers were designed for queue management, under time-varying time delay uncertainties. Here we assume that, besides the queue information, the controller has access to capacity. On top of the existing robust controller, we use an additional controller term, acting on the capacity information. We investigate optimal ways to design such additional controller terms.

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Sthanunathan Ramakrishnan, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, John Wen, Hitay Ozbay, ``Effect of Time Delay in Network Traffic Control,'' Short Paper, Automatic Controls Conference (ACC), 2001.

In this paper we consider the effect of timedelay in the performance of the AIMD algorithm, specifically queue length and fairness for both rate and window based sources. The queue bounds can be used to allocate buffers at bottlenecks so that flows can go through without any loss.We modify the AIMD algorithm by making the additive rate increase parameter proportional to the round trip time and the decrease parameter proportional to the power of round trip time which makes the algorithm fair even with heterogenous round trip times.

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A. Iftar, H. Ozbay, T.Kang, S. Kalyanaraman, ``Robust Rate-Based Controllers for High Speed Networks: The Case of Uncertain Time-varying Time delays,'' Proceedings of Automatic Controls Conference (ACC), 2000.

An H-infinity based robust controller is designed for a rate-feedback flow-control problem in single-bottleneck data-communication networks. The controller is robust to uncertain time-varying multiple time-delays in different channels. The controller forces the queue length at the bottleneck node to the desired steady-state value asymptotically and also satisfies a weighted fairness condition. Some simulations are also presented to demonstrate the time domain performance of the controller.

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H. Ozbay, T. Kang, S. Kalyanaraman, A. Iftar, ``Performance and Robustness Analysis of an H-infinity based Flow Controller,'' Proceedings of the Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Phoenix, AZ, December 1999.

In a recent work by the authors, an H-infinity based flow controller was designed for explicit rate-based congestion control in high-speed networks. Time-daly uncertainties were taken into account when the controller was designed. This paper studies robustness margins, e.g., largest allowable time delay, as functions of a weighting parameter used in the definition of the H-infinity optimization problem. Another issue discussed here is "non-fragile" (i.e. internally robust) implementation of the H-infinity controller. Time-domain performance is demonstrated via simulations.

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Hitay Ozbay, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, Altug Iftar, "On Rate-Based Congestion Control in High Speed Networks: Design of an H-infinity Based Flow Controller for Single Bottleneck" American Control Conference, July 1997.

Typical congestion control algorithms for high speed networks inclide local flow controllers at the bottleneck nodes. In this paper an H-infinity based controlled is developed for rate feedback in a single bottleneck network. The rates can be assigned to the sources only after a certain transmission delay. Controller design specifications for this time delay system include "fairness" to multiple users, "usage" optimization, and minimization of the transients in the queue length. STability robustness, against uncertainties in time delays, is also specified as a design goal. By a simple algebra the problem is transformed to an H-infinity control of a plant with a time delay, and it is solved by using an algorithm developed earlier for this class of problems

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Wireless Work: Back to Top

Su Yi, Yong Pei, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, and Babak Azimi-Sadjadi, "How is the Capacity of Ad Hoc Networks Improved with Directional Antennas?" Submitted to IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications issue on Fundamental Performance Limits of Wireless Sensor Networks, 2003

The capacity of ad hoc wireless networks is constrained by the interference between concurrent transmissions from neighboring nodes. Gupta and Kumar have shown that the capacity of an ad hoc network does not scale well with the increasing number of nodes in the system when using omnidirectional antennas. We investigate the capacity of ad hoc wireless networks using directional antennas. In this work, we consider arbitrary networks and random networks where nodes are assumed to be static.
In arbitrary networks, due to the reduction of the interference area and the reduced probability of two neighbors pointing to each other, the capacity is proven to achieve a gain in terms of the antenna beamwidth and depending on the different antenna modes in transmission and reception. We also state that the per-node capacity would achieve constant with the increase of number of nodes when some requirements are met for antenna beamwidth and transmission range. For random networks, interfering neighbors are reduced due to the decrease of interference area when directional antennas are used for transmission and/or reception. Thus throughput capacity of the networks will be improved by using directional antennas. We have also analyzed hybrid beamform patterns that are a mix of omnidirectional/directional and a better model of real directional antennas.

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Su Yi, Yong Pei, and Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "On the Capacity Improvement of Ad Hoc Wireless Networks Using Directional Antennas", ACM Mobihoc 2003, Annapolis, MD, June 2003.

The capacity of ad hoc wireless networks is constrained by the interference between concurrent transmissions from neighboring nodes. Gupta and Kumar have shown that the capacity of an ad hoc network does not scale well with the increasing number of nodes in the system when using omnidirectional antennas. We investigate the capacity of ad hoc wireless networks using directional antennas. In this work, we consider arbitrary networks and random networks where nodes are assumed to be static.
In arbitrary networks, due to the reduction of the interference area, the capacity gain is proven to be $\sqrt{\frac{2\pi}{\alpha}}$ when using directional transmission and omni reception. Because of the reduced probability of two neighbors pointing to each other, the capacity gain is $\sqrt{\frac{2\pi}{\beta}}$ when omni transmission and directional reception are used. Although these two expressions look similar, the proof technique is different and new. By taking advantage of the above two approaches, the capacity gain is $\frac{2\pi}{\sqrt{\alpha\beta}}$ for the case both transmission and reception are directional.
For random networks, interfering neighbors are reduced due to the decrease of interference area when directional antennas are used for transmission and/or reception. The throughput improvement factor is $\frac{2\pi}{\alpha}$, $\frac{2\pi}{\beta}$ and $\frac{4\pi^2}{\alpha\beta}$ for directional transmission/omni reception, omni transmission/directional reception, and directional transmission/directional reception, respectively.
We have also analyzed hybrid beamform patterns that are a mix of omnidirectional/directional and a better model of real directional antennas.

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O.Tickoo, S. Raghunath, S. Kalyanaraman, "Route Fragility: A Novel Metric for Route Selection in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks", IEEE ICON 2003, Sydney, Australia.

A key factor deciding the performance of a routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks is the manner in which it adapts to route changes caused by mobility. Exploiting the intuition that a {\em less} dynamic route lasts longer, we propose a new metric, the {\em Route Fragility Coefficient} (RFC), to compare routes. RFC estimates the rate at which a given route {\em expands} or {\em contracts}. Expansion refers to adjacent nodes moving apart, while contraction refers to their moving closer. RFC combines the individual link contraction or expansion behavior to present a unified picture of the route dynamics. We demonstrate that lower the value of RFC, more static (less fragile) the route. We then use this metric as a basis for route selection so that route discovery yields routes that last longer and hence increase throughput while reducing control overhead.

We provide a simple distributed mechanism to compute RFC, so that a Route-Request (RREQ) packet contains the metric for the path it traversed, when it reaches the destination. The Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR) is enhanced with the proposed metric in the NS-2 simulation environment. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate improvement in throughput and reduction in routing protocol overhead with increased mobility.

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Murat Yuksel, Ritesh Pradhan, Shivkumar Kalyanaraman, "Trajectory-Based Forwarding Mechanisms for Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks" (Extended Abstract), To appear in IEEE 2nd Upstate Workshop on Sensor Networks, Syracuse, NY, October, 2002.

Routing in ad-hoc sensor networks is a complicated task because of many reasons. The nodes are low powered and they cannot maintain routing tables large enough for well-known routing protocols. Because of that, greedy forwarding at intermediate nodes is desirable in ad-hoc networks. Also, for traffic engineering, multipath capabilities are important. So, it is desirable to define routes at the source like in Source Based Routing (SBR) while performing greedy forwarding at intermediate nodes. We investigate Trajectory-Based Routing (TBR) which was proposed as a middle-ground between SBR and greedy forwarding techniques. In TBR, source encodes trajectory to be traversed and embeds it into each packet. Upon the arrival of each packet, intermediate nodes decode the trajectory and employ greedy forwarding techniques such that the packet follows its trajectory as much as possible. In this paper, we provide techniques to efficiently forward packets along a trajectory defined as a parametric curve. We use the well-known Bezier parametric curve for encoding trajectories into packets at source. Based on this trajectory encoding, we develop and evaluate various greedy forwarding algorithms.

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D. Shekhar, H. Qin, S. Kalyanaraman, K. Kidambi, ``Performance Optimization of TCP/IP over Asymmetric Wired and Wireless Links,'' Invited paper at European Wireless 2002, February 2002.

We analyze TCP performance in asymmetric networks, where the throughput significantly depends on the reverse direction and packet loss. We introduce a new operational model called the "AMP model" which, with an understanding of TCP dynamics and buffer management techniques explains the performance effects seen. We apply this model to guide design improvements in buffer management (ack-regulation) and scheduling schemes to achieve performance improvements of an order of magnitude or more. The schemes have been tested through simulation and implementation, and the module driven improvements observed are better than those proposed in earlier literature.

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