Interactions between Congestion Control Algorithms

Abstract

Congestion control algorithms are crucial in achieving high utilization while preventing overloading the network. Over the years, many different congestion control algorithms have been developed, each trying to improve over others in specific situations. However, their interactions and co-existence has, to date, not been thoroughly evaluated, which is the focus of this paper. Through head-to-head comparisons of loss-based, delay-based and hybrid types of congestion control algorithms, we reveal that fairness in resources claimed is often not achieved, especially when flows sharing a link have different round-trip times or belong to different groups.