Transport layer adaptable rate control (TARC): analysis of a transport layer flow control mechanism for high speed networks

The rapid growth of today's emerging high speed networks has made currently implemented transport layer flow control techniques inadequate for the performance levels required now and in the future. Throughput at the upper layers is throttled due to architectural designs tailored to "last-generation" technologies. We define and analyze a transport layer flow control algorithm featuring hybrid open-loop/feedback-based rate control with burst detection for a connection-oriented transport layer protocol. TARC can be used alone or in conjunction with a window flow control mechanism. It can provide support for QoS guarantees, and can take advantage of lower layer congestion control or bandwidth under-utilization information. We analyze our model under multiple transport connections with bursty traffic and present an iterative method for computing the system state distributions and performance measures. Using this iterative analysis, we explore the behavior of TARC and compare its performance to other transport layer flow control algorithms.