article

Estimating loss rates with TCP

Authors:

Wesley M. Eddy,

Shawn OstermannAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, Volume 31, Issue 3

Pages 12 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/974036.974038

Published: 01 December 2003 Publication History

Abstract

Estimating loss rates along a network path is a problem that has received much attention within the research community. However, deriving accurate estimates of the loss rate from TCP transfers has been largely unaddressed. In this paper, we first show that using a simple count of the number of retransmissions yields inaccurate estimates of the loss rate in many cases. The mis-estimation stems from flaws in TCP's retransmission schemes that cause the protocol to spuriously retransmit data in a number of cases. Next, we develop techniques for refining the retransmission count to produce a better loss rate estimate for both Reno and SACK variants of TCP. Finally, we explore two SACK-based variants of TCP with an eye towards reducing spurious retransmits, the root cause of the mis-estimation of the loss rate. An additional benefit of reducing the number of needless retransmits is a reduction in the amount of shared network resources used to accomplish no useful work.

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Cited By

Wu HLiu YNi SCheng GHu X(2023)LossDetection: Real-Time Packet Loss Monitoring System for Sampled Traffic DataIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2022.320338920:1(30-45)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TNSM.2022.3203389
Wu HLiu YCheng GHu X(2021)Real-time Packet Loss Detection for TCP and UDP Based on Feature-SketchIEEE INFOCOM 2021 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS)10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS51825.2021.9484593(1-6)Online publication date: 10-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS51825.2021.9484593
Lan HDing WDeng L(2019)Application-Level Packet Loss Rate Measurement Based on Improved L-Rex ModelSymmetry10.3390/sym1104044211:4(442)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2019
https://doi.org/10.3390/sym11040442
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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review

ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review Volume 31, Issue 3

December 2003

42 pages

ISSN:0163-5999

DOI:10.1145/974036

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Copyright © 2003 Authors.

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 December 2003

Published in SIGMETRICS Volume 31, Issue 3

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Cited By

Wu HLiu YNi SCheng GHu X(2023)LossDetection: Real-Time Packet Loss Monitoring System for Sampled Traffic DataIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2022.320338920:1(30-45)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TNSM.2022.3203389
Wu HLiu YCheng GHu X(2021)Real-time Packet Loss Detection for TCP and UDP Based on Feature-SketchIEEE INFOCOM 2021 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS)10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS51825.2021.9484593(1-6)Online publication date: 10-May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/INFOCOMWKSHPS51825.2021.9484593
Lan HDing WDeng L(2019)Application-Level Packet Loss Rate Measurement Based on Improved L-Rex ModelSymmetry10.3390/sym1104044211:4(442)Online publication date: 27-Mar-2019
https://doi.org/10.3390/sym11040442
Lan HDing WGong J(2019)Useful Traffic Loss Rate Estimation Based on Network Layer MeasurementIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.28939517(33289-33303)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2893951
Finta IElias GIlles J(2018)Packet Loss and Duplication Handling in Stream Processing Environment2018 IEEE 18th International Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Informatics (CINTI)10.1109/CINTI.2018.8928195(000179-000184)Online publication date: Nov-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/CINTI.2018.8928195
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11277-018-5952-6
Kuhlewind MBuhler TTrammell BNeuhaus SMuntener RFairhurst G(2017)A path layer for the Internet: Enabling network operations on encrypted protocols2017 13th International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM)10.23919/CNSM.2017.8255973(1-9)Online publication date: Nov-2017
https://doi.org/10.23919/CNSM.2017.8255973
Moshref MYu MGovindan RVahdat ABarcellos MCrowcroft JVahdat AKatti S(2016)TrumpetProceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGCOMM Conference10.1145/2934872.2934879(129-143)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2016
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Poornachandran PSreeram RKrishnan MPal SPrem Sankar AAshok A(2015)Internet of Vulnerable Things (IoVT): Detecting Vulnerable SOHO Routers2015 International Conference on Information Technology (ICIT)10.1109/ICIT.2015.49(119-123)Online publication date: Dec-2015
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Xiong KChen X(2015)Ensuring Cloud Service Guarantees via Service Level Agreement (SLA)-Based Resource AllocationProceedings of the 2015 IEEE 35th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems Workshops10.1109/ICDCSW.2015.18(35-41)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2015
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