*Flow control in telecommunications networks

Flow control is one of the exciting challenges in telecommunication networks. From a control theoretic view point these are extremely complex and difficult problems, since they often require decentralized mechanisms, information is often partial and noizy. Moreover, in high-speed networks the propagation delay may be quite large in comparison to the transmission delay, so that the information available to the controller are typically delayed and out of date. I have been involved in the analysis of the TCP/IP window-type congestion control within a contract with France Telecom - C.N.E.T. I have also been interested in rate-based flow control, which has been selected by the ATM forum as the main approach for the flow control in in the Available Bit Rate (ABR) service. I have especially been interested in applying control theoretical tools in such control schemes.

1. Papers using control theoretic methods for rate-based flow control:

*[1.1] E. Altman, F. Baccelli and J. C. Bolot , Discrete-time analysis of adaptive rate control mechanisms , High Speed Networks and their performance, H. G. Perros and Y. Viniotis Eds., North Holland, pp. 121-140, 1994.
*[1.2] E. Altman and T. Basar , Optimal Rate Control for High Speed Telecommunication Networks, 34th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 1995, New Orleans, Louisiana, (invited paper). A more detailed version: Research report UILU-ENG-95-2235, DC-169, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, October, 1995.
*[1.3] E. Altman and T. Basar , Optimal Rate Control for High Speed Telecommunication Networks: the case of delayed information , First Workshop on ATM Traffic Management , WATM'95, IFIP, WG.6.2 Broadband Communication, Paris, December 1995.
*[1.4] Z. Pan, E. Altman and T. Basar Robust Adaptive Flow Control in High Speed Telecommunication Networks , (invited paper) the proceedings of the 35th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control , Kobe, Japan, Dec. 1996. An extended version appeared in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Vol 1, No. 2, 2002
*[1.5] O. Ait-Hellal , E. Altman and T. Basar , Rate based flow control with bandwidth information , (invited paper) European Trans. on Telecom. , special issue on ABR, pp. 55-66, 1996. A short version (invited paper) the proceedings of the 35th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Kobe, Japan, Dec. 1996.
*[1.6] E. Altman and T. Basar , Multi-user rate-based flow control , IEEE Trans. on Communications , pp. 940-949, 1998.
*[1.7] O. Ait-Hellal , E. Altman, D. Elouadghiri, M. Erramdani , Performace evaluation of the rate-based fow control mechanism for ABR service , Telcommunication Systems. , Vol. 12, pp. 211-236, 1999.
*[1.8] E. Altman, T. Basar and R. Srikant , Multi-user rate-based flow control with action delays: a team-theoretic approach , Proc. of the 36th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control , San Diego, California, Dec. 1997.
*[1.9] E. Altman, T. Basar and R. Srikant , Robust rate control for ABR sources , IEEE INFOCOM , San-Fransisco, California, USA, March 29 - April 2, 1998.
*[1.10] E. Altman, T. Basar and R. Srikant , Congestion control as a stochastic problem with action delays , AUTOMATICA , Special issue on Control Methods for Communication Networks, Anantharam and Walrand Eds., Dec., 1999.
*[1.11] E. Altman, T. Basar and N. Hovakimian, Worst-case rate-based flow control with an ARMA model of the available bandwidt , Anals of Dynamic Games , Vol. 6, Birkhauser, V. Gaitsgory, J. Filar and K. Mizukami, editors, pp. 3-29, 2000.
*[1.12] O. Ait-Hellal and E. Altman, Performance Evaluation of the Rate-Based Flow Control Mechanism for ABR Service: Generalization , IEEE Infocom'99, 819-826, New-York, March. 1999.

*Papers on analysis of TCP/IP:

2 Analysis of a single connection

*[2.1] E. Altman, F. Boccara, J. Bolot , P. Nain , P. Brown, D. Collange and C. Fenzy, Aalysis of the TCP/IP flow control mechanism in high-speed wide-area networks (pdf file), 34th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, December 1995, New Orleans, Louisiana, (invited paper), pp. 368-373. For a compressed postscript file, click here , See also INRIA Research Report No. 3142, 1997. .
*[2.2] O. Ait-Hellal and E. Altman, Problems in TCP Vegas and TCP Reno, DNAC Congress (De Nouvelles Architectures pour les Communications) , UVSQ, Paris, December 3-5, 1996.
*[2.3] O. Ait-Hellal and E. Altman, Analysis of TCP Vegas and TCP Reno, Telecommunication Systems, 2000. A shorter version appeared in International Conference on Communications (ICC'97) , Montreal, 8-12 june 1997.
*[2.4] Chadi Barakat and Eitan Altman, " Analysis of TCP with several bottleneck nodes", in proceedings of IEEE Globecom, Rio, Brazil, December 1999. A more detailed version: Research Report RR-3620 , INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France, February 1999.
*[2.5] Chadi Barakat, Nesrine Chaher, Walid Dabbous, and Eitan Altman, " Improving TCP/IP over Geostationary Satellite Links", in proceedings of IEEE Globecom, Rio, Brazil, December 1999. A more detailed version: Research Report RR-3573 , INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France, December 1998.
*[2.6] Chadi Barakat, and Eitan Altman, " Impact of network buffers on TCP Start-Up", in Proceedings of IEEE Middle East Workshop on Networking, Beirut, Lebanon, November 1999.
*[2.7] E. Altman, C. Barakat and K. Avratchenkov, TCP in presence of bursty losses", Proceedings of Sigmetrics , Santa Clara, California, June 18-21, 2000. An extended version in Performance Evaluation , Vol. 42, Issues 2-3, pp. 129-147, 2000.
*[2.8] E. Altman, C. Barakat and K. Avratchenkov , "A stochastic Model of TCP/IP with Stationary Ergodic Random Losses", ACM-Sigcomm, Aug. 28 - Sept. 1, Stockholm, Sweden, 2000. See also INRIA Research Report RR-3824 .
*[2.9] C. Barakat and E. Altman, "On ACK filtering on a slow reverse channel" , Proceedings of the first international workshop on Quality of future Internet Services , Berlin, Germany, September 2000. Received the best PhD student paper award. More detailed version: INRIA Research Report RR-3824, November 1999.
*[2.10] Chadi Barakat and Eitan Altman, " Analysis of TCP in Networks with small buffering capacity and large bandwidth-delay product", Research Report RR-3574, INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France, December 1998.
*[2.11] E. Altman, K. Avratchenkov, C. Barakat and R. Nunez Queija , "State-dependent M/G/1 Type Queueing Analysis for Congestion Control in Data Networks" CWI report PNA-R0005 , July, 2000. A short versionProceedings of IEEE INFOCOM, Anchorage, April, 2001. ( Slides ).
*[2.12] E. Altman, C. Barakat, K. Avratchenkov and P. Dube TCP in presence of bursty losses postscript , pdf , International Conference on Performance and QoS of Next Generation Networks, P & Q Net 2000, Nov. 27-30, 2000, Nagoya, Japan. A longer version entitled Performance Analysis of AIMD Mechanisms over a Multi-state Markovian Path, appeared in Computer Networks, vol. 47, pp. 307--326, 2005.
*[2.13] K. Avratchenkov, U. Ayesta , E. Altman, P. Nain , C. Barakat "The effect of router buffer size on the TCP performance", (postscript file, pdf file), in the Proceedings of LONIIS workshop on Telecommunication Networks and Teletraffic Theory, St.Petersburg, Russia, pp. 116-121, January 2002.
*[2.14] E. Altman, C. Barakat and V. M. Ramos Ramos , Analysis of AIMD protocols over paths with variable delay , IEEE Infocom'04 Hong-Kong, March 2004.

3. Analysis of competing connections

*[3.1] E. Altman, C. Barakat, E. Laborde, P. Brown and D. Collange , Fairness Analysis of TCP/IP (also PDF file ) Proceedings of IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Sydney, Australia, December 2000. Slides: posstscript file , (also PDF file ).
*[3.2] O. Ait-Hellal , E. Altman, D. Elouadghiri, M. Erramdani, N. Mikou, Performance of TCP/IP: the case of two Controlled Sources , International Conference for Computer Communications - ICCC'97 , Cannes, France, November 19-21, 1997.
*[3.3] E. Altman, T. Jimenez , R. Nunez Queija , Analysis of two competing TCP/IP connections , Performance Evaluation, Vol 49(1-4), pp. 43-55, Sept 2002.
*[3.4] E. Altman, A. A. Kherani, K. Avratchenkov and B. J. Prabhu , Performance analysis and stochasitc stability of congestion control protocols, IEEE INFOCOM, Miami, March 13-17, 2005.
*[3.5] E. Altman, R. El Azouzi, D. Ros and B. Tuffin, " Loss Strategies for Competing AIMD Connections", Proceedings of Networking 2004, Athens, Greece, May 9--14, 2004. Extended version in Computer Networks 50, 1799-1815, 2006.
*[3.6] E. Altman, D. Barman, B. Tuffin and M. Vojnovic, " Parallel TCP Sockets: Simple Model, Throughput and Validation", IEEE Infocom, 2006. See also Extended Version.
*[3.7] E Altman, T. Basar and N. Malouch, The role of information update in flow control, IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol 56 No. 8, pp 1331-1342, 2008.

4. TCP in General Topologies

*[4.1] E. Altman, K. Avratchenkov, C. Barakat , TCP Network Calculus: The case of large delay-bandwidth product , IEEE INFOCOM, New-York, USA, June 2002.
*[4.2] Eitan Altman, Konstantin Avrachenkov, Chadi Barakat, Kartikeya Chandrayana, "Multilevel approach for the modeling of large TCP/IP networks", invited to the Symposium on Recent Advances for Modeling and Simulation Tools for Communications Networks and Services, organized by COST 285 in Surrey, UK, 2007.

5. Short TCP connections Session level analysis


*[5.1] C. Barakat and E. Altman, "Performance of short TCP transfers", Proceedings of Networking 2000, Paris, May, 2000.
*[5.2] E. Altman, T. Jimenez , D. Kofman, DPS queues with stationary ergodic service times and the performance of TCP in overload INFOCOM, Hong-Kong, March 2004.
*[5.3] U. Ayesta , K. Avratchenkov, E. Altman, C. Barakat P. Dube, Multilevel approach for modeling short TCP sessions Proceedings of ITC18, Berlin, Sept 2003.

*E. Altman and T. Jiménez, "Simulation analysis of RED with short lived TCP connection", Computer Networks, Vol 44 Issue 5, pp. 631-641, April 2004.

6. Diffserv

*[6.1] C. Barakat and E. Altman, "A Markovian Model for TCP Analysis in a Differentiated Services Network" , Proceedings of the first international workshop on Quality of future Internet Services , Berlin, Germany, September 2000.
*[6.2] C. Barakat and E. Altman " A Markovian Model for TCP analysis in a differentiated services network, ", Telecommunication Systems, Vol. 25 No. 1,2, pp 129--155, 2004.
*[6.3] A Stateless Approach for Improving TCP Performance Using DiffServ, E. Altman, [ps, pdf], Proceedings of ITC 18, Berlin, Sept 2003.
*[6.4] E. Altman, D. Barman, R. El Azouzi, D. Ros and B. Tuffin, " Pricing Differentiated Services: A Game-Theoretic Approach", Computer Networks, Volume 50, Issue 7, 15 May 2006, Pages 982-1002

7. TCP Crosslayer

*[7.1] C. Barakat and E. Altman, Bandwidth Tradeoff between TCP and Link-Level FEC , proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Networking, , Colmar, France, July 2001. Full version in Computer Networks, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 133-150, June 2002.
*[7.2] D. Barman , I. Matta , E. Altman, R. El Azouzi , TCP Optimization through FEC, ARQ and Transmission Power Tradeoffs , 2nd international Conference on Wired/Wireless Internet Communications WWIC 2004 Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, February 05 - 07, 2004.
*[7.3] A. Chockalingam, E. Altman, J. V. K. Murthy, and R. Kumar, Cross-layer Design for Optimizing TCP Performance, Proc. IEEE ICC'2005, Seoul, May 2005.
* [7.4] Balakrishna Prabhu E. Altman, Konstantin Avratchenkov and J. Abadia Dominguez, A simulation study of TCP performance over UMTS, IEEE VTC2003-fall, Orlando, USA, October 2003.
* [7.5] Dinesh Kumar, Dhiman Barman, Eitan Altman and Jean-Marc Kelif, "New Cross-Layer Channel Switching Policy for TCP Transmission on 3G UMTS Downlink", Wireless Telecommunications Symposium, Pomona, CA, USA, April 26-28, 2008.

8. Scalable TCP, MIMD, High Speed TCP and TCP Westwood+

*[8.1] R. El-Khoury and E. Altman , Analysis of Scalable TCP , HET-NETs'04 International working conference on Performance Modelling and Evaluation of Heterogeneous Networks July, West Yorkshire, U.K., 2004.
*[8.2] E. Altman, K. Avratchenkov, C. Barakat, A. A. Kherani and B. J. Prabhu , Analysis of scalable TCP, 7th IEEE International Conference on High Speed Networks and Multimedia Communications (HSNMC'04) June 30 - July 2, 2004 Toulouse, France.
*[8.3] E. Altman, K. Avratchenkov and B. J. Prabhu , Fairness in MIMD Congestion Control Algorithms, IEEE INFOCOM, Miami, March 13-17, 2005.
*[8.4] E. Altman, C. Barakat, S. Mascolo and M. Moller and J. Sun Analysis of TCP Westwood+ in high speed networks, Proceedings of PFLDnets: 4th International Workshop on Protocols for Fast Long-Distance Networks, 2006
*[8.5] G. Boggia, P. Camarda, A. D’Alconzo, L.A. Grieco, S. Mascolo, E. Altman, C. Barakat, "Modeling the AIADD Paradigm in Networks with Variable Delays", proceedings of CoNext, Lisboa, Portugal, December 2006. [ pdf ]
*[8.6] Niels Moller, Chadi Barakat, Konstantin Avrachenkov, and Eitan Altman, "Inter-protocol fairness between TCP New Reno and TCP Westwood+", in proceedings of NGI 2007 (Conference on Next Generation Internet Networks), Trondheim, Norway, May 2007. [ pdf ]
*[8.7] R. Marquez , E. Altman and S. Sole Alvarez, Modeling TCP and High Speed TCP: A nonlinear extension to AIMD mechanisms 7th IEEE International Conference on High Speed Networks and Multimedia Communications (HSNMC'04) June 30 - July 2, 2004 Toulouse, France.

9. Analysis of General increase/decrease TCP

*[9.1] E. Altman, K. Avratchenkov, C. Barakat and R. Nunez Queija , "TCP modeling in the presence of nonlinear window growth", Proceedings of ITC-17, Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, September 2001.
*[9.2] R. Marquez , E. Altman and S. Sole Alvarez, Time-averaging of high-speed data transfer protocols , IEEE Trans. on Automatic Control, Vol 50, No. 12, Dec 2005.
*[9.3] E. Altman, A. A. Kherani, K. Avratchenkov and B. J. Prabhu , Comparative Study of different adaptive window protocols, Telecommunication Systems , Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 321-350, 2005.

10. Surveys on TCP

*[10.1] Chadi Barakat, Eitan Altman and Walid Dabbous, On TCP performance in a heterogeneous network : A Survey ", IEEE Communication Magazine, January 2000. A more detailed version: Research Report RR-3737 , INRIA, Sophia Antipolis, France, July 1999.
*[10.2]- A. Al Hanbali, E. Altman, P. Nain, A survey of TCP over Ad Hoc Networks, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials,  Vol.7 No.3, P. 22-36,  Auguest 2005. INRIA Research Report RR-5182, May 2004.


 

Slides


*E. Altman, C. Barakat and K. Avratchenkov, "Performance of TCP/IP", talk in France Telecom R&D, Issy les Moulineaux, Paris, July 2000

 

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