Some Observations on the Effect of Route Fluctuation and Network Link Failure on TCP.pdfVIP

Some Observations on the Effect of Route Fluctuation and Network Link Failure on TCP Ulka Ranadive and Deep Medhi Computer Networking, University of Missouri–Kansas City ( Current Affiliation: HammerHead Networks) Abstract ity [8, 9, 11]. Labovitz et. al. [8] have shown that network instability on the Internet, caused mainly by the underly- Network layer phenomena (such as route fluctuations and ing transient physical and data link problems, can affect the link failure) occur due to a variety of reasons. While TCP routing protocols leading to routing instability. Examples performance and the routing protocol dynamics have been of routing instability are route loops, routing fluctuations, independently studied, their inter-relation has received lit- route oscillations, synchronization and so on. We also point tle attention. In this paper, we study the interaction between to the NANOG web site that discusses TCP and routing in the presence of link state routing over a various routing problems. While these works have primar- number of network topologies. Our observation is that rout- ily identified network layer issues based on measurements, ing changes can cause additional effects such as inevitable except for [16], studies on the impact on TCP behavior in false retransmission and data compression in TCP (beyond the presence of dynamic routing have essentially remained effects observed in the absence of routing). sparse.