CUBIC for Fast and Long-Distance Networks
draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-10
The information below is for an old version of the document.
| Document | Type |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Lisong Xu , Sangtae Ha , Injong Rhee , Vidhi Goel , Lars Eggert | ||
| Last updated | 2022-09-12 | ||
| Replaces | draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis | ||
| RFC stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
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draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-10
TCPM L. Xu
Internet-Draft UNL
Obsoletes: 8312 (if approved) S. Ha
Updates: 5681 (if approved) Colorado
Intended status: Standards Track I. Rhee
Expires: 16 March 2023 Bowery
V. Goel
Apple Inc.
L. Eggert, Ed.
NetApp
12 September 2022
CUBIC for Fast and Long-Distance Networks
draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-10
Abstract
CUBIC is a standard TCP congestion control algorithm that uses a
cubic function instead of a linear congestion window increase
function to improve scalability and stability over fast and long-
distance networks. CUBIC has been adopted as the default TCP
congestion control algorithm by the Linux, Windows, and Apple stacks.
This document updates the specification of CUBIC to include
algorithmic improvements based on these implementations and recent
academic work. Based on the extensive deployment experience with
CUBIC, it also moves the specification to the Standards Track,
obsoleting RFC 8312. This also requires updating RFC 5681, to allow
for CUBIC's occasionally more aggressive sending behavior.
About This Document
This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.
Status information for this document may be found at
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis/.
Discussion of this document takes place on the TCPM Working Group
mailing list (mailto:tcpm@ietf.org), which is archived at
https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/tcpm/. Subscribe at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/tcpm/.
Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis.
Note to the RFC Editor
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Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on 16 March 2023.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Design Principles of CUBIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
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3.1. Principle 1 for the CUBIC Increase Function . . . . . . . 6
3.2. Principle 2 for Reno-Friendliness . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3. Principle 3 for RTT Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.4. Principle 4 for the CUBIC Decrease Factor . . . . . . . . 8
4. CUBIC Congestion Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.1. Constants of Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.1.2. Variables of Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.2. Window Increase Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3. Reno-Friendly Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.4. Concave Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.5. Convex Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4.6. Multiplicative Decrease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.7. Fast Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.8. Timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.9. Spurious Congestion Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.9.1. Spurious timeout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.9.2. Spurious loss detected by acknowledgements . . . . . 18
4.10. Slow Start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.1. Fairness to Reno . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.2. Using Spare Capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.3. Difficult Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.4. Investigating a Range of Environments . . . . . . . . . . 24
5.5. Protection against Congestion Collapse . . . . . . . . . 24
5.6. Fairness within the Alternative Congestion Control
Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.7. Performance with Misbehaving Nodes and Outside
Attackers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.8. Behavior for Application-Limited Flows . . . . . . . . . 25
5.9. Responses to Sudden or Transient Events . . . . . . . . . 25
5.10. Incremental Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Appendix A. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Appendix B. Evolution of CUBIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
B.1. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-09 . . . . . . . . . . . 31
B.2. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-08 . . . . . . . . . . . 31
B.3. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-07 . . . . . . . . . . . 31
B.4. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-06 . . . . . . . . . . . 32
B.5. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-05 . . . . . . . . . . . 32
B.6. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-04 . . . . . . . . . . . 32
B.7. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-03 . . . . . . . . . . . 33
B.8. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-02 . . . . . . . . . . . 33
B.9. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-01 . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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B.10. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-00 . . . . . . . . . . . 34
B.11. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-03 . . . . . . . . . . 34
B.12. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-02 . . . . . . . . . . 34
B.13. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-01 . . . . . . . . . . 34
B.14. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-00 . . . . . . . . . . 34
B.15. Since RFC8312 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
B.16. Since the Original Paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
1. Introduction
CUBIC has been adopted as the default TCP congestion control
algorithm in the Linux, Windows, and Apple stacks, and has been used
and deployed globally. Extensive, decade-long deployment experience
in vastly different Internet scenarios has convincingly demonstrated
that CUBIC is safe for deployment on the global Internet and delivers
substantial benefits over classical Reno congestion control
[RFC5681]. It is therefore to be regarded as the currently most
widely deployed standard for TCP congestion control. CUBIC can also
be used for other transport protocols such as QUIC [RFC9000] and SCTP
[RFC4960] as a default congestion controller.
The design of CUBIC was motivated by the well-documented problem
classical Reno TCP has with low utilization over fast and long-
distance networks [K03][RFC3649]. This problem arises from a slow
increase of the congestion window following a congestion event in a
network with a large bandwidth-delay product (BDP). [HLRX07]
indicates that this problem is frequently observed even in the range
of congestion window sizes over several hundreds of packets. This
problem is equally applicable to all Reno-style standards and their
variants, including TCP-Reno [RFC5681], TCP-NewReno
[RFC6582][RFC6675], SCTP [RFC4960], TFRC [RFC5348], and QUIC
congestion control [RFC9002], which use the same linear increase
function for window growth. All Reno-style standards and their
variants are collectively referred to as "Reno" in this document.
CUBIC, originally proposed in [HRX08], is a modification to the
congestion control algorithm of classical Reno to remedy this
problem. Specifically, CUBIC uses a cubic function instead of the
linear window increase function of Reno to improve scalability and
stability under fast and long-distance networks.
This document updates the specification of CUBIC to include
algorithmic improvements based on the Linux, Windows, and Apple
implementations and recent academic work. Based on the extensive
deployment experience with CUBIC, it also moves the specification to
the Standards Track, obsoleting [RFC8312]. This requires an update
to Section 3 of [RFC5681], which limits the aggressiveness of Reno
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TCP implementations. Since CUBIC is occasionally more aggressive
than the [RFC5681] algorithms, this document updates the first
paragraph of Section 3 of [RFC5681], replacing it with a normative
reference to guideline (1) in Section 3 of [RFC5033], which allows
for CUBIC's behavior as defined in this document.
Binary Increase Congestion Control (BIC-TCP) [XHR04], a predecessor
of CUBIC, was selected as the default TCP congestion control
algorithm by Linux in the year 2005 and had been used for several
years by the Internet community at large.
CUBIC uses a similar window increase function as BIC-TCP and is
designed to be less aggressive and fairer to Reno in bandwidth usage
than BIC-TCP while maintaining the strengths of BIC-TCP such as
stability, window scalability, and round-trip time (RTT) fairness.
[RFC5033] documents the IETF's best current practices for specifying
new congestion control algorithms, specifically, ones that differ
from the general congestion control principles outlined in [RFC2914].
It describes what type of evaluation is expected by the IETF to
understand the suitability of a new congestion control algorithm and
the process to enable a specification to be approved for widespread
deployment in the global Internet.
There are areas in which CUBIC differs from the congestion control
algorithms previously published in standards-track RFCs; those
changes are specified in this document. However, it is not obvious
that these changes go beyond the general congestion control
principles outlined in [RFC2914], so the process in [RFC5033] may not
apply.
Also, the wide deployment of CUBIC on the Internet was driven by
direct adoption in most of the popular operating systems, and did not
follow the practices documented in [RFC5033]. However, due to the
resulting Internet-scale deployment experience over a long period of
time, the IETF has determined that CUBIC may be published as a
standards-track specification. This decision by the IETF does not
alter the general guidance in [RFC2914].
The following sections first briefly explain the design principles of
CUBIC, provide the exact specification of CUBIC, and finally discuss
the safety features of CUBIC following the guidelines specified in
[RFC5033].
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2. Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Design Principles of CUBIC
CUBIC is designed according to the following design principles:
Principle 1: For better network utilization and stability, CUBIC
uses both the concave and convex profiles of a cubic function to
increase the congestion window size, instead of using just a
convex function.
Principle 2: To be Reno-friendly, CUBIC is designed to behave like
Reno in networks with short RTTs and small bandwidth where Reno
performs well.
Principle 3: For RTT-fairness, CUBIC is designed to achieve linear
bandwidth sharing among flows with different RTTs.
Principle 4: CUBIC appropriately sets its multiplicative window
decrease factor in order to balance between the scalability and
convergence speed.
3.1. Principle 1 for the CUBIC Increase Function
For better network utilization and stability, CUBIC [HRX08] uses a
cubic window increase function in terms of the elapsed time from the
last congestion event. While most alternative congestion control
algorithms to Reno increase the congestion window using convex
functions, CUBIC uses both the concave and convex profiles of a cubic
function for window growth.
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After a window reduction in response to a congestion event detected
by duplicate ACKs, Explicit Congestion Notification-Echo (ECN-Echo,
ECE) ACKs [RFC3168], TCP RACK [RFC8985] or QUIC loss detection
[RFC9002], CUBIC remembers the congestion window size at which it
received the congestion event and performs a multiplicative decrease
of the congestion window. When CUBIC enters into congestion
avoidance, it starts to increase the congestion window using the
concave profile of the cubic function. The cubic function is set to
have its plateau at the remembered congestion window size, so that
the concave window increase continues until then. After that, the
cubic function turns into a convex profile and the convex window
increase begins.
This style of window adjustment (concave and then convex) improves
the algorithm stability while maintaining high network utilization
[CEHRX09]. This is because the window size remains almost constant,
forming a plateau around the remembered congestion window size of the
last congestion event, where network utilization is deemed highest.
Under steady state, most window size samples of CUBIC are close to
that remembered congestion window size, thus promoting high network
utilization and stability.
Note that congestion control algorithms that only use convex
functions to increase the congestion window size have their maximum
increments around the remembered congestion window size of the last
congestion event, and thus introduce many packet bursts around the
saturation point of the network, likely causing frequent global loss
synchronizations.
3.2. Principle 2 for Reno-Friendliness
CUBIC promotes per-flow fairness to Reno. Note that Reno performs
well over paths with short RTTs and small bandwidths (or small BDPs).
There is only a scalability problem in networks with long RTTs and
large bandwidths (or large BDPs).
A congestion control algorithm designed to be friendly to Reno on a
per-flow basis must increase its congestion window less aggressively
in small BDP networks than in large BDP networks.
The aggressiveness of CUBIC mainly depends on the maximum window size
before a window reduction, which is smaller in small-BDP networks
than in large-BDP networks. Thus, CUBIC increases its congestion
window less aggressively in small-BDP networks than in large-BDP
networks.
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Furthermore, in cases when the cubic function of CUBIC would increase
the congestion window less aggressively than Reno, CUBIC simply
follows the window size of Reno to ensure that CUBIC achieves at
least the same throughput as Reno in small-BDP networks. The region
where CUBIC behaves like Reno is called the "Reno-friendly region".
3.3. Principle 3 for RTT Fairness
Two CUBIC flows with different RTTs have a throughput ratio that is
linearly proportional to the inverse of their RTT ratio, where the
throughput of a flow is approximately the size of its congestion
window divided by its RTT.
Specifically, CUBIC maintains a window increase rate independent of
RTTs outside the Reno-friendly region, and thus flows with different
RTTs have similar congestion window sizes under steady state when
they operate outside the Reno-friendly region.
This notion of a linear throughput ratio is similar to that of Reno
under high statistical multiplexing where packet loss is independent
of individual flow rates. However, under low statistical
multiplexing, the throughput ratio of Reno flows with different RTTs
is quadratically proportional to the inverse of their RTT ratio
[XHR04].
CUBIC always ensures a linear throughput ratio independent of the
amount of statistical multiplexing. This is an improvement over
Reno. While there is no consensus on particular throughput ratios
for different RTT flows, over wired Internet paths, use of a linear
throughput ratio seems more reasonable than equal throughputs (i.e.,
the same throughput for flows with different RTTs) or a higher-order
throughput ratio (e.g., a quadratical throughput ratio of Reno under
low statistical multiplexing environments).
3.4. Principle 4 for the CUBIC Decrease Factor
To balance between scalability and convergence speed, CUBIC sets the
multiplicative window decrease factor to 0.7, whereas Reno uses 0.5.
While this improves the scalability of CUBIC, a side effect of this
decision is slower convergence, especially under low statistical
multiplexing. This design choice is following the observation that
HighSpeed TCP (HSTCP) [RFC3649] and other approaches (e.g., [GV02])
made: the current Internet becomes more asynchronous with less
frequent loss synchronizations under high statistical multiplexing.
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In such environments, even strict Multiplicative-Increase
Multiplicative-Decrease (MIMD) can converge. CUBIC flows with the
same RTT always converge to the same throughput independent of
statistical multiplexing, thus achieving intra-algorithm fairness.
In environments with sufficient statistical multiplexing, the
convergence speed of CUBIC is reasonable.
4. CUBIC Congestion Control
This section discusses how the congestion window is updated during
the different stages of the CUBIC congestion controller.
4.1. Definitions
The unit of all window sizes in this document is segments of the
maximum segment size (MSS), and the unit of all times is seconds.
Implementations can use bytes to express window sizes, which would
require factoring in the maximum segment size wherever necessary and
replacing _segments_acked_ with the number of bytes acknowledged in
Figure 4.
4.1.1. Constants of Interest
β__cubic_: CUBIC multiplicative decrease factor as described in
Section 4.6.
α__cubic_: CUBIC additive increase factor used in Reno-friendly
region as described in Section 4.3.
_C_: constant that determines the aggressiveness of CUBIC in
competing with other congestion control algorithms in high BDP
networks. Please see Section 5 for more explanation on how it is
set. The unit for _C_ is
segment
-------
3
second
4.1.2. Variables of Interest
This section defines the variables required to implement CUBIC:
_RTT_: Smoothed round-trip time in seconds, calculated as described
in [RFC6298].
_cwnd_: Current congestion window in segments.
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_ssthresh_: Current slow start threshold in segments.
_prior_cwnd_: Size of _cwnd_ in segments at the time of setting
_ssthresh_ most recently, either upon exiting the first slow start,
or just before _cwnd_ was reduced in the last congestion event.
_W_max_: Size of _cwnd_ in segments just before _cwnd_ was reduced in
the last congestion event when fast convergence is disabled.
However, if fast convergence is enabled, the size may be further
reduced based on the current saturation point.
_K_: The time period in seconds it takes to increase the congestion
window size at the beginning of the current congestion avoidance
stage to _W_max_.
_current_time_: Current time of the system in seconds.
_epoch_start_: The time in seconds at which the current congestion
avoidance stage started.
_cwnd_start_: The _cwnd_ at the beginning of the current congestion
avoidance stage, i.e., at time _epoch_start_.
W_cubic(_t_): The congestion window in segments at time _t_ in
seconds based on the cubic increase function, as described in
Section 4.2.
_target_: Target value of congestion window in segments after the
next RTT, that is, W_cubic(_t_ + _RTT_), as described in Section 4.2.
_W_est_: An estimate for the congestion window in segments in the
Reno-friendly region, that is, an estimate for the congestion window
of Reno.
_segments_acked_: Number of MSS-sized segments acked when a "new ACK"
is received, i.e., an ACK that cumulatively acknowledges the delivery
of new data. This number will be a decimal value when a new ACK
acknowledges an amount of data that is not MSS-sized. Specifically,
it can be less than 1 when a new ACK acknowledges a segment smaller
than the MSS.
4.2. Window Increase Function
CUBIC maintains the acknowledgment (ACK) clocking of Reno by
increasing the congestion window only at the reception of a new ACK.
It does not make any changes to the TCP Fast Recovery and Fast
Retransmit algorithms [RFC6582][RFC6675].
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During congestion avoidance, after a congestion event is detected by
mechanisms described in Section 3.1, CUBIC uses a window increase
function different from Reno.
CUBIC uses the following window increase function:
3
W (t) = C * (t - K) + W
cubic max
Figure 1
where _t_ is the elapsed time in seconds from the beginning of the
current congestion avoidance stage, that is,
t = current_time - epoch
start
and where _epoch_start_ is the time at which the current congestion
avoidance stage starts. _K_ is the time period that the above
function takes to increase the congestion window size at the
beginning of the current congestion avoidance stage to _W_max_ if
there are no further congestion events and is calculated using the
following equation:
________________
/W - cwnd
3 / max start
K = | / ----------------
|/ C
Figure 2
where _cwnd_start_ is the congestion window at the beginning of the
current congestion avoidance stage.
Upon receiving a new ACK during congestion avoidance, CUBIC computes
the _target_ congestion window size after the next _RTT_ using
Figure 1 as follows, where _RTT_ is the smoothed round-trip time.
The lower and upper bounds below ensure that CUBIC's congestion
window increase rate is non-decreasing and is less than the increase
rate of slow start [SXEZ19].
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/
| if W (t + RTT) < cwnd
|cwnd cubic
|
|
|
target = < if W (t + RTT) > 1.5 * cwnd
|1.5 * cwnd cubic
|
|
|W (t + RTT)
| cubic otherwise
\
The elapsed time _t_ in Figure 1 MUST NOT include periods during
which _cwnd_ has not been updated due to application-limited behavior
(see Section 5.8).
Depending on the value of the current congestion window size _cwnd_,
CUBIC runs in three different regions:
1. The Reno-friendly region, which ensures that CUBIC achieves at
least the same throughput as Reno.
2. The concave region, if CUBIC is not in the Reno-friendly region
and _cwnd_ is less than _W_max_.
3. The convex region, if CUBIC is not in the Reno-friendly region
and _cwnd_ is greater than _W_max_.
The next sections describe the exact actions taken by CUBIC in each
region.
4.3. Reno-Friendly Region
Reno performs well in certain types of networks, for example, under
short RTTs and small bandwidths (or small BDPs). In these networks,
CUBIC remains in the Reno-friendly region to achieve at least the
same throughput as Reno.
The Reno-friendly region is designed according to the analysis in
[FHP00], which studies the performance of an AIMD algorithm with an
additive factor of α (segments per _RTT_) and a multiplicative factor
of β, denoted by AIMD(α, β). _p_ is the packet loss rate.
Specifically, the average congestion window size of AIMD(α, β) can be
calculated using Figure 3.
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_______________
/ α * (1 + β)
AVG_AIMD(α, β) = | / ---------------
|/ 2 * (1 - β) * p
Figure 3
By the same analysis, to achieve a similar average window size as
Reno that uses AIMD(1, 0.5), α must be equal to,
1 - β
3 * -----
1 + β
Thus, CUBIC uses Figure 4 to estimate the window size _W_est_ in the
Reno-friendly region with
1 - β
cubic
α = 3 * ----------
cubic 1 + β
cubic
which achieves approximately the same average window size as Reno in
many cases. The model used to calculate α__cubic_ is not absolutely
precise, but analysis and simulation [AIMD-friendliness], as well as
over a decade of experience with CUBIC in the public Internet, show
that this approach produces acceptable levels of rate fairness
between CUBIC and Reno flows. Also, no significant drawbacks of the
model have been reported. However, it would be beneficial to see
continued detailed analysis on it. When receiving a new ACK in
congestion avoidance (where _cwnd_ could be greater than or less than
_W_max_), CUBIC checks whether W_cubic(_t_) is less than _W_est_. If
so, CUBIC is in the Reno-friendly region and _cwnd_ SHOULD be set to
_W_est_ at each reception of a new ACK.
_W_est_ is set equal to _cwnd_start_ at the start of the congestion
avoidance stage. After that, on every new ACK, _W_est_ is updated
using Figure 4. Note that this equation is for a connection where
Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC) [RFC3465] is disabled. For a
connection with ABC enabled, this equation SHOULD be adjusted by
using the number of acknowledged bytes instead of acknowledged
segments. Also note that this equation works for connections with
enabled or disabled Delayed ACKs [RFC5681], as _segments_acked_ will
be different based on the segments actually acknowledged by a new
ACK.
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segments_acked
W = W + α * --------------
est est cubic cwnd
Figure 4
Once _W_est_ has grown to reach the _cwnd_ at the time of most
recently setting _ssthresh_, that is, _W_est_ >= _prior_cwnd_, the
sender SHOULD set α__cubic_ to 1 to ensure that it can achieve the
same congestion window increment rate as Reno, which uses AIMD(1,
0.5).
4.4. Concave Region
When receiving a new ACK in congestion avoidance, if CUBIC is not in
the Reno-friendly region and _cwnd_ is less than _W_max_, then CUBIC
is in the concave region. In this region, _cwnd_ MUST be incremented
by
target - cwnd
-------------
cwnd
for each received new ACK, where _target_ is calculated as described
in Section 4.2.
4.5. Convex Region
When receiving a new ACK in congestion avoidance, if CUBIC is not in
the Reno-friendly region and _cwnd_ is larger than or equal to
_W_max_, then CUBIC is in the convex region.
The convex region indicates that the network conditions might have
changed since the last congestion event, possibly implying more
available bandwidth after some flow departures. Since the Internet
is highly asynchronous, some amount of perturbation is always
possible without causing a major change in available bandwidth.
Unless it is overridden by the AIMD window increase, CUBIC is very
careful in this region. The convex profile aims to increase the
window very slowly at the beginning when _cwnd_ is around _W_max_ and
then gradually increases its rate of increase. This region is also
called the "maximum probing phase", since CUBIC is searching for a
new _W_max_. In this region, _cwnd_ MUST be incremented by
target - cwnd
-------------
cwnd
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for each received new ACK, where _target_ is calculated as described
in Section 4.2.
4.6. Multiplicative Decrease
When a congestion event is detected by mechanisms described in
Section 3.1, CUBIC updates _W_max_ and reduces _cwnd_ and _ssthresh_
immediately as described below. In case of packet loss, the sender
MUST reduce _cwnd_ and _ssthresh_ immediately upon entering loss
recovery, similar to [RFC5681] (and [RFC6675]). Note that other
mechanisms, such as Proportional Rate Reduction [RFC6937], can be
used to reduce the sending rate during loss recovery more gradually.
The parameter β__cubic_ SHOULD be set to 0.7, which is different from
the multiplicative decrease factor used in [RFC5681] (and [RFC6675])
during fast recovery.
In Figure 5, _flight_size_ is the amount of outstanding data in the
network, as defined in [RFC5681]. Note that a rate-limited
application with idle periods or periods when unable to send at the
full rate permitted by _cwnd_ may easily encounter notable variations
in the volume of data sent from one RTT to another, resulting in
_flight_size_ that is significantly less than _cwnd_ on a congestion
event. This may decrease _cwnd_ to a much lower value than
necessary. To avoid suboptimal performance with such applications,
the mechanisms described in [RFC7661] can be used to mitigate this
issue as it would allow using a value between _cwnd_ and
_flight_size_ to calculate the new _ssthresh_ in Figure 5. The
congestion window growth mechanism defined in [RFC7661] is safe to
use even when _cwnd_ is greater than the receive window as it
validates _cwnd_ based on the amount of data acknowledged by the
network in an RTT which implicitly accounts for the allowed receive
window. Some implementations of CUBIC currently use _cwnd_ instead
of _flight_size_ when calculating a new _ssthresh_ using Figure 5.
The implementations that use _cwnd_ MUST use other measures to not
allow _cwnd_ to grow when bytes in flight is smaller than _cwnd_.
That also effectively avoids _cwnd_ from growing beyond the receive
window. Such measures are important to prevent a CUBIC sender from
using an arbitrarily high _cwnd_ value in calculating the new value
for _ssthresh_ and _cwnd_ when a congestion event is signaled, but it
is not as robust as the mechanisms described in [RFC7661]. Likewise,
a QUIC sender that uses _cwnd_ to calculate a new value for the
congestion window and slow-start threshold on a congestion event is
required to apply similar mechanisms [RFC9002].
(Artwork only available as ascii-art: No external link available, see
draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-10.html for artwork.)
Figure 5
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A side effect of setting β__cubic_ to a value bigger than 0.5 is that
packet loss can happen for more than one round-trip in certain cases,
but it can work efficiently in other cases, for example, when
HyStart++ is used along with CUBIC or when the sending rate is
limited by the application. While a more adaptive setting of
β__cubic_ could help limit packet loss to a single round, it would
require detailed analyses and large-scale evaluations to validate
such algorithms.
Note that CUBIC MUST continue to reduce _cwnd_ in response to
congestion events due to ECN-Echo ACKs until it reaches a value of 1
MSS. If congestion events indicated by ECN-Echo ACKs persist, a
sender with a _cwnd_ of 1 MSS MUST reduce its sending rate even
further. It can achieve that by using a retransmission timer with
exponential backoff, as described in [RFC3168].
4.7. Fast Convergence
To improve convergence speed, CUBIC uses a heuristic. When a new
flow joins the network, existing flows need to give up some of their
bandwidth to allow the new flow some room for growth, if the existing
flows have been using all the network bandwidth. To speed up this
bandwidth release by existing flows, the following "Fast Convergence"
mechanism SHOULD be implemented.
With Fast Convergence, when a congestion event occurs, _W_max_ is
updated as follows, before the window reduction described in
Section 4.6.
/
| 1 + β
| cubic if cwnd < W and fast convergence is enabled,
|cwnd * ---------- max
| 2
W = <
max | further reduce W
| max
|
| otherwise, remember cwnd before reduction
\cwnd
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At a congestion event, if the current _cwnd_ is less than _W_max_,
this indicates that the saturation point experienced by this flow is
getting reduced because of a change in available bandwidth. This
flow can then release more bandwidth by reducing _W_max_ further.
This action effectively lengthens the time for this flow to increase
its congestion window, because the reduced _W_max_ forces the flow to
plateau earlier. This allows more time for the new flow to catch up
to its congestion window size.
Fast Convergence is designed for network environments with multiple
CUBIC flows. In network environments with only a single CUBIC flow
and without any other traffic, Fast Convergence SHOULD be disabled.
4.8. Timeout
In case of a timeout, CUBIC follows Reno to reduce _cwnd_ [RFC5681],
but sets _ssthresh_ using β__cubic_ (same as in Section 4.6) in a way
that is different from Reno TCP [RFC5681].
During the first congestion avoidance stage after a timeout, CUBIC
increases its congestion window size using Figure 1, where _t_ is the
elapsed time since the beginning of the current congestion avoidance,
_K_ is set to 0, and _W_max_ is set to the congestion window size at
the beginning of the current congestion avoidance stage. In
addition, for the Reno-friendly region, _W_est_ SHOULD be set to the
congestion window size at the beginning of the current congestion
avoidance.
4.9. Spurious Congestion Events
In cases where CUBIC reduces its congestion window in response to
having detected packet loss via duplicate ACKs or timeouts, there is
a possibility that the missing ACK would arrive after the congestion
window reduction and a corresponding packet retransmission. For
example, packet reordering could trigger this behavior. A high
degree of packet reordering could cause multiple congestion window
reduction events, where spurious losses are incorrectly interpreted
as congestion signals, thus degrading CUBIC's performance
significantly.
For TCP, there are two types of spurious events - spurious timeouts
and spurious fast retransmits. In case of QUIC, there are no
spurious timeouts as the loss is only detected after receiving an
ACK.
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4.9.1. Spurious timeout
An implementation MAY detect spurious timeouts based on the
mechanisms described in Forward RTO-Recovery [RFC5682]. Experimental
alternatives include Eifel [RFC3522]. When a spurious timeout is
detected, a TCP implementation MAY follow the response algorithm
described in [RFC4015] to restore the congestion control state and
adapt the retransmission timer to avoid further spurious timeouts.
4.9.2. Spurious loss detected by acknowledgements
Upon receiving an ACK, a TCP implementation MAY detect spurious
losses either using TCP Timestamps or via D-SACK[RFC2883].
Experimental alternatives include Eifel detection algorithm [RFC3522]
which uses TCP Timestamps and DSACK based detection [RFC3708] which
uses DSACK information. A QUIC implementation can easily determine a
spurious loss if a QUIC packet is acknowledged after it has been
marked as lost and the original data has been retransmitted with a
new QUIC packet.
This section specifies a simple response algorithm when a spurious
loss is detected by acknowledgements. Implementations would need to
carefully evaluate the impact of using this algorithm in different
environments that may experience sudden change in available capacity
(e.g., due to variable radio capacity, a routing change, or a
mobility event).
When a packet loss is detected via acknowledgements, a CUBIC
implementation MAY save the current value of the following variables
before the congestion window is reduced.
undo_cwnd = cwnd
undo_prior_cwnd = prior_cwnd
undo_ssthresh = ssthresh
undo_W = W
max max
undo_K = K
undo_epoch = epoch
start start
undo_W_{est} = W
est
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Once the previously declared packet loss is confirmed to be spurious,
CUBIC MAY restore the original values of the above-mentioned
variables as follows if the current _cwnd_ is lower than
_prior_cwnd_. Restoring the original values ensures that CUBIC's
performance is similar to what it would be without spurious losses.
\
cwnd = undo_cwnd |
|
prior_cwnd = undo_prior_cwnd|
|
ssthresh = undo_ssthresh |
|
W = undo_W |
max max >if cwnd < prior_cwnd
|
K = undo_K |
|
epoch = undo_epoch |
start start|
|
W = undo_W |
est est /
In rare cases, when the detection happens long after a spurious loss
event and the current _cwnd_ is already higher than _prior_cwnd_,
CUBIC SHOULD continue to use the current and the most recent values
of these variables.
4.10. Slow Start
CUBIC MUST employ a slow-start algorithm, when _cwnd_ is no more than
_ssthresh_. In general, CUBIC SHOULD use the HyStart++ slow start
algorithm [I-D.ietf-tcpm-hystartplusplus], or MAY use the Reno TCP
slow start algorithm [RFC5681] in the rare cases when HyStart++ is
not suitable. Experimental alternatives include hybrid slow start
[HR11], a predecessor to HyStart++ that some CUBIC implementations
have used as the default for the last decade, and limited slow start
[RFC3742]. Whichever start-up algorithm is used, work might be
needed to ensure that the end of slow start and the first
multiplicative decrease of congestion avoidance work well together.
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When CUBIC uses HyStart++ [I-D.ietf-tcpm-hystartplusplus], it may
exit the first slow start without incurring any packet loss and thus
_W_max_ is undefined. In this special case, CUBIC sets _prior_cwnd =
cwnd_ and switches to congestion avoidance. It then increases its
congestion window size using Figure 1, where _t_ is the elapsed time
since the beginning of the current congestion avoidance, _K_ is set
to 0, and _W_max_ is set to the congestion window size at the
beginning of the current congestion avoidance stage.
5. Discussion
This section further discusses the safety features of CUBIC following
the guidelines specified in [RFC5033].
With a deterministic loss model where the number of packets between
two successive packet losses is always _1/p_, CUBIC always operates
with the concave window profile, which greatly simplifies the
performance analysis of CUBIC. The average window size of CUBIC can
be obtained by the following function:
________________ ____
/C * (3 + β ) 4 / 3
4 / cubic |/ RTT
AVG_W = | / ---------------- * -------
cubic | / 4 * (1 - β ) __
|/ cubic 4 / 3
|/ p
Figure 6
With β__cubic_ set to 0.7, the above formula reduces to:
____
_______ 4 / 3
4 /C * 3.7 |/ RTT
AVG_W = | / ------- * -------
cubic |/ 1.2 __
4 / 3
|/ p
Figure 7
The following subsection will determine the value of _C_ using
Figure 7.
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5.1. Fairness to Reno
In environments where Reno is able to make reasonable use of the
available bandwidth, CUBIC does not significantly change this state.
Reno performs well in the following two types of networks:
1. networks with a small bandwidth-delay product (BDP)
2. networks with a short RTTs, but not necessarily a small BDP
CUBIC is designed to behave very similarly to Reno in the above two
types of networks. The following two tables show the average window
sizes of Reno TCP, HSTCP, and CUBIC TCP. The average window sizes of
Reno TCP and HSTCP are from [RFC3649]. The average window size of
CUBIC is calculated using Figure 7 and the CUBIC Reno-friendly region
for three different values of _C_.
+=============+=======+========+================+=========+========+
| Loss Rate P | Reno | HSTCP | CUBIC (C=0.04) | CUBIC | CUBIC |
| | | | | (C=0.4) | (C=4) |
+=============+=======+========+================+=========+========+
| 1.0e-02 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
| 1.0e-03 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 59 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
| 1.0e-04 | 120 | 263 | 120 | 187 | 333 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
| 1.0e-05 | 379 | 1795 | 593 | 1054 | 1874 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
| 1.0e-06 | 1200 | 12280 | 3332 | 5926 | 10538 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
| 1.0e-07 | 3795 | 83981 | 18740 | 33325 | 59261 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
| 1.0e-08 | 12000 | 574356 | 105383 | 187400 | 333250 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+--------+
Table 1: Reno TCP, HSTCP, and CUBIC with RTT = 0.1 seconds
Table 1 describes the response function of Reno TCP, HSTCP, and CUBIC
in networks with _RTT_ = 0.1 seconds. The average window size is in
MSS-sized segments.
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+=============+=======+========+================+=========+=======+
| Loss Rate P | Reno | HSTCP | CUBIC (C=0.04) | CUBIC | CUBIC |
| | | | | (C=0.4) | (C=4) |
+=============+=======+========+================+=========+=======+
| 1.0e-02 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
| 1.0e-03 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 38 | 38 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
| 1.0e-04 | 120 | 263 | 120 | 120 | 120 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
| 1.0e-05 | 379 | 1795 | 379 | 379 | 379 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
| 1.0e-06 | 1200 | 12280 | 1200 | 1200 | 1874 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
| 1.0e-07 | 3795 | 83981 | 3795 | 5926 | 10538 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
| 1.0e-08 | 12000 | 574356 | 18740 | 33325 | 59261 |
+-------------+-------+--------+----------------+---------+-------+
Table 2: Reno TCP, HSTCP, and CUBIC with RTT = 0.01 seconds
Table 2 describes the response function of Reno TCP, HSTCP, and CUBIC
in networks with _RTT_ = 0.01 seconds. The average window size is in
MSS-sized segments.
Both tables show that CUBIC with any of these three _C_ values is
more friendly to Reno TCP than HSTCP, especially in networks with a
short _RTT_ where Reno TCP performs reasonably well. For example, in
a network with _RTT_ = 0.01 seconds and p=10^-6, Reno TCP has an
average window of 1200 packets. If the packet size is 1500 bytes,
then Reno TCP can achieve an average rate of 1.44 Gbps. In this
case, CUBIC with _C_=0.04 or _C_=0.4 achieves exactly the same rate
as Reno TCP, whereas HSTCP is about ten times more aggressive than
Reno TCP.
_C_ determines the aggressiveness of CUBIC in competing with other
congestion control algorithms for bandwidth. CUBIC is more friendly
to Reno TCP, if the value of _C_ is lower. However, it is NOT
RECOMMENDED to set _C_ to a very low value like 0.04, since CUBIC
with a low _C_ cannot efficiently use the bandwidth in fast and long-
distance networks. Based on these observations and extensive
deployment experience, _C_=0.4 seems to give a good balance between
Reno-friendliness and aggressiveness of window increase. Therefore,
_C_ SHOULD be set to 0.4. With _C_ set to 0.4, Figure 7 is reduced
to:
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____
4 / 3
|/ RTT
AVG_W = 1.054 * -------
cubic __
4 / 3
|/ p
Figure 8
Figure 8 is then used in the next subsection to show the scalability
of CUBIC.
5.2. Using Spare Capacity
CUBIC uses a more aggressive window increase function than Reno for
fast and long-distance networks.
The following table shows that to achieve the 10 Gbps rate, Reno TCP
requires a packet loss rate of 2.0e-10, while CUBIC TCP requires a
packet loss rate of 2.9e-8.
+===================+===========+=========+=========+=========+
| Throughput (Mbps) | Average W | Reno P | HSTCP P | CUBIC P |
+===================+===========+=========+=========+=========+
| 1 | 8.3 | 2.0e-2 | 2.0e-2 | 2.0e-2 |
+-------------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+
| 10 | 83.3 | 2.0e-4 | 3.9e-4 | 2.9e-4 |
+-------------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+
| 100 | 833.3 | 2.0e-6 | 2.5e-5 | 1.4e-5 |
+-------------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+
| 1000 | 8333.3 | 2.0e-8 | 1.5e-6 | 6.3e-7 |
+-------------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+
| 10000 | 83333.3 | 2.0e-10 | 1.0e-7 | 2.9e-8 |
+-------------------+-----------+---------+---------+---------+
Table 3: Required packet loss rate for Reno TCP, HSTCP, and
CUBIC to achieve a certain throughput
Table 3 describes the required packet loss rate for Reno TCP, HSTCP,
and CUBIC to achieve a certain throughput, with 1500-byte packets and
an _RTT_ of 0.1 seconds.
The test results in [HLRX07] indicate that, in typical cases with a
degree of background traffic, CUBIC uses the spare bandwidth left
unused by existing Reno TCP flows in the same bottleneck link without
taking away much bandwidth from the existing flows.
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5.3. Difficult Environments
CUBIC is designed to remedy the poor performance of Reno in fast and
long-distance networks.
5.4. Investigating a Range of Environments
CUBIC has been extensively studied using simulations, testbed
emulations, Internet experiments, and Internet measurements, covering
a wide range of network environments
[HLRX07][H16][CEHRX09][HR11][BSCLU13][LBEWK16]. They have
convincingly demonstrated that CUBIC delivers substantial benefits
over classical Reno congestion control [RFC5681].
Same as Reno, CUBIC is a loss-based congestion control algorithm.
Because CUBIC is designed to be more aggressive (due to a faster
window increase function and bigger multiplicative decrease factor)
than Reno in fast and long-distance networks, it can fill large drop-
tail buffers more quickly than Reno and increases the risk of a
standing queue [RFC8511]. In this case, proper queue sizing and
management [RFC7567] could be used to mitigate the risk to some
extent and reduce the packet queuing delay. Also, in large-BDP
networks after a congestion event, CUBIC, due its cubic window
increase function, recovers quickly to the highest link utilization
point. This means that link utilization is less sensitive to an
active queue management (AQM) target that is lower than the amplitude
of the whole sawtooth.
Similar to Reno, the performance of CUBIC as a loss-based congestion
control algorithm suffers in networks where a packet loss is not a
good indication of bandwidth utilization, such as wireless or mobile
networks [LIU16].
5.5. Protection against Congestion Collapse
With regard to the potential of causing congestion collapse, CUBIC
behaves like Reno, since CUBIC modifies only the window adjustment
algorithm of Reno. Thus, it does not modify the ACK clocking and
timeout behaviors of Reno.
CUBIC also satisfies the "full backoff" requirement as described in
[RFC5033]. After reducing the sending rate to one packet per RTT in
response to congestion events due to ECN-Echo ACKs, CUBIC then
exponentially increases the transmission timer for each packet
retransmission while congestion persists.
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5.6. Fairness within the Alternative Congestion Control Algorithm
CUBIC ensures convergence of competing CUBIC flows with the same RTT
in the same bottleneck links to an equal throughput. When competing
flows have different RTT values, their throughput ratio is linearly
proportional to the inverse of their RTT ratios. This is true
independently of the level of statistical multiplexing on the link.
The convergence time depends on the network environments (e.g.,
bandwidth, RTT) and the level of statistical multiplexing, as
mentioned in Section 3.4.
5.7. Performance with Misbehaving Nodes and Outside Attackers
This is not considered in the current CUBIC design.
5.8. Behavior for Application-Limited Flows
A flow is application-limited if it is currently sending less than
what is allowed by the congestion window. This can happen if the
flow is limited by either the sender application or the receiver
application (via the receiver advertised window) and thus sends less
data than what is allowed by the sender's congestion window.
CUBIC does not increase its congestion window if a flow is
application-limited. Section 4.2 requires that _t_ in Figure 1 does
not include application-limited periods, such as idle periods,
otherwise W_cubic(_t_) might be very high after restarting from these
periods.
5.9. Responses to Sudden or Transient Events
If there is a sudden increase in capacity, e.g., due to variable
radio capacity, a routing change, or a mobility event, CUBIC is
designed to utilize the newly available capacity faster than Reno.
On the other hand, if there is a sudden decrease in capacity, CUBIC
reduces more slowly than Reno. This remains true whether or not
CUBIC is in Reno-friendly mode and whether or not fast convergence is
enabled.
5.10. Incremental Deployment
CUBIC requires only changes to the congestion control at the sender,
and it does not require any changes at receivers. That is, a CUBIC
sender works correctly with Reno receivers. In addition, CUBIC does
not require any changes to routers and does not require any
assistance from routers.
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6. Security Considerations
CUBIC makes no changes to the underlying security of TCP. More
information about TCP security concerns can be found in [RFC5681].
7. IANA Considerations
This document does not require any IANA actions.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[I-D.ietf-tcpm-hystartplusplus]
Balasubramanian, P., Huang, Y., and M. Olson, "HyStart++:
Modified Slow Start for TCP", Work in Progress, Internet-
Draft, draft-ietf-tcpm-hystartplusplus-09, 27 August 2022,
<https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-
hystartplusplus-09>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.
[RFC2883] Floyd, S., Mahdavi, J., Mathis, M., and M. Podolsky, "An
Extension to the Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) Option
for TCP", RFC 2883, DOI 10.17487/RFC2883, July 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2883>.
[RFC2914] Floyd, S., "Congestion Control Principles", BCP 41,
RFC 2914, DOI 10.17487/RFC2914, September 2000,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2914>.
[RFC3168] Ramakrishnan, K., Floyd, S., and D. Black, "The Addition
of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP",
RFC 3168, DOI 10.17487/RFC3168, September 2001,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3168>.
[RFC4015] Ludwig, R. and A. Gurtov, "The Eifel Response Algorithm
for TCP", RFC 4015, DOI 10.17487/RFC4015, February 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4015>.
[RFC5033] Floyd, S. and M. Allman, "Specifying New Congestion
Control Algorithms", BCP 133, RFC 5033,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5033, August 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5033>.
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[RFC5348] Floyd, S., Handley, M., Padhye, J., and J. Widmer, "TCP
Friendly Rate Control (TFRC): Protocol Specification",
RFC 5348, DOI 10.17487/RFC5348, September 2008,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5348>.
[RFC5681] Allman, M., Paxson, V., and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion
Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5681>.
[RFC5682] Sarolahti, P., Kojo, M., Yamamoto, K., and M. Hata,
"Forward RTO-Recovery (F-RTO): An Algorithm for Detecting
Spurious Retransmission Timeouts with TCP", RFC 5682,
DOI 10.17487/RFC5682, September 2009,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5682>.
[RFC6298] Paxson, V., Allman, M., Chu, J., and M. Sargent,
"Computing TCP's Retransmission Timer", RFC 6298,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6298, June 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6298>.
[RFC6582] Henderson, T., Floyd, S., Gurtov, A., and Y. Nishida, "The
NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm",
RFC 6582, DOI 10.17487/RFC6582, April 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6582>.
[RFC6675] Blanton, E., Allman, M., Wang, L., Jarvinen, I., Kojo, M.,
and Y. Nishida, "A Conservative Loss Recovery Algorithm
Based on Selective Acknowledgment (SACK) for TCP",
RFC 6675, DOI 10.17487/RFC6675, August 2012,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6675>.
[RFC7567] Baker, F., Ed. and G. Fairhurst, Ed., "IETF
Recommendations Regarding Active Queue Management",
BCP 197, RFC 7567, DOI 10.17487/RFC7567, July 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7567>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.
[RFC8985] Cheng, Y., Cardwell, N., Dukkipati, N., and P. Jha, "The
RACK-TLP Loss Detection Algorithm for TCP", RFC 8985,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8985, February 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8985>.
[RFC9002] Iyengar, J., Ed. and I. Swett, Ed., "QUIC Loss Detection
and Congestion Control", RFC 9002, DOI 10.17487/RFC9002,
May 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9002>.
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8.2. Informative References
[AIMD-friendliness]
Briscoe, B. and O. Albisser, "Friendliness between AIMD
Algorithms", RFC Editor, please replace this URL with the
permanent arXiv one , 8 August 2022,
<https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bbriscoe/cubic-
reno/main/creno_tr.pdf>.
[BSCLU13] Belhareth, S., Sassatelli, L., Collange, D., Lopez-
Pacheco, D., and G. Urvoy-Keller, "Understanding TCP cubic
performance in the cloud: A mean-field approach", 2013
IEEE 2nd International Conference on Cloud
Networking (CloudNet), DOI 10.1109/cloudnet.2013.6710576,
November 2013,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/cloudnet.2013.6710576>.
[CEHRX09] Cai, H., Eun, D., Ha, S., Rhee, I., and L. Xu, "Stochastic
convex ordering for multiplicative decrease internet
congestion control", Computer Networks vol. 53, no. 3, pp.
365-381, DOI 10.1016/j.comnet.2008.10.012, February 2009,
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2008.10.012>.
[FHP00] Floyd, S., Handley, M., and J. Padhye, "A Comparison of
Equation-Based and AIMD Congestion Control", May 2000,
<https://www.icir.org/tfrc/aimd.pdf>.
[GV02] Gorinsky, S. and H. Vin, "Extended Analysis of Binary
Adjustment Algorithms", Technical Report TR2002-29,
Department of Computer Sciences, The University of
Texas at Austin, 11 August 2002,
<https://www.cs.utexas.edu/ftp/techreports/tr02-39.ps.gz>.
[H16] Ha, S., "Simulation, Testbed, and Deployment Testing
Results of CUBIC", 3 November 2016,
<https://web.archive.org/web/20161118125842/
http://netsrv.csc.ncsu.edu/wiki/index.php/TCP_Testing>.
[HLRX07] Ha, S., Le, L., Rhee, I., and L. Xu, "Impact of background
traffic on performance of high-speed TCP variant
protocols", Computer Networks vol. 51, no. 7, pp.
1748-1762, DOI 10.1016/j.comnet.2006.11.005, May 2007,
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2006.11.005>.
[HR11] Ha, S. and I. Rhee, "Taming the elephants: New TCP slow
start", Computer Networks vol. 55, no. 9, pp. 2092-2110,
DOI 10.1016/j.comnet.2011.01.014, June 2011,
<https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2011.01.014>.
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[HRX08] Ha, S., Rhee, I., and L. Xu, "CUBIC: a new TCP-friendly
high-speed TCP variant", ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems
Review vol. 42, no. 5, pp. 64-74,
DOI 10.1145/1400097.1400105, July 2008,
<https://doi.org/10.1145/1400097.1400105>.
[K03] Kelly, T., "Scalable TCP: improving performance in
highspeed wide area networks", ACM SIGCOMM Computer
Communication Review vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 83-91,
DOI 10.1145/956981.956989, April 2003,
<https://doi.org/10.1145/956981.956989>.
[LBEWK16] Lukaseder, T., Bradatsch, L., Erb, B., Van Der Heijden,
R., and F. Kargl, "A Comparison of TCP Congestion Control
Algorithms in 10G Networks", 2016 IEEE 41st Conference on
Local Computer Networks (LCN), DOI 10.1109/lcn.2016.121,
November 2016, <https://doi.org/10.1109/lcn.2016.121>.
[LIU16] Liu, K. and J. Lee, "On Improving TCP Performance over
Mobile Data Networks", IEEE Transactions on Mobile
Computing vol. 15, no. 10, pp. 2522-2536,
DOI 10.1109/tmc.2015.2500227, October 2016,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/tmc.2015.2500227>.
[RFC3465] Allman, M., "TCP Congestion Control with Appropriate Byte
Counting (ABC)", RFC 3465, DOI 10.17487/RFC3465, February
2003, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3465>.
[RFC3522] Ludwig, R. and M. Meyer, "The Eifel Detection Algorithm
for TCP", RFC 3522, DOI 10.17487/RFC3522, April 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3522>.
[RFC3649] Floyd, S., "HighSpeed TCP for Large Congestion Windows",
RFC 3649, DOI 10.17487/RFC3649, December 2003,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3649>.
[RFC3708] Blanton, E. and M. Allman, "Using TCP Duplicate Selective
Acknowledgement (DSACKs) and Stream Control Transmission
Protocol (SCTP) Duplicate Transmission Sequence Numbers
(TSNs) to Detect Spurious Retransmissions", RFC 3708,
DOI 10.17487/RFC3708, February 2004,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3708>.
[RFC3742] Floyd, S., "Limited Slow-Start for TCP with Large
Congestion Windows", RFC 3742, DOI 10.17487/RFC3742, March
2004, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3742>.
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[RFC4960] Stewart, R., Ed., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol",
RFC 4960, DOI 10.17487/RFC4960, September 2007,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4960>.
[RFC6937] Mathis, M., Dukkipati, N., and Y. Cheng, "Proportional
Rate Reduction for TCP", RFC 6937, DOI 10.17487/RFC6937,
May 2013, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6937>.
[RFC7661] Fairhurst, G., Sathiaseelan, A., and R. Secchi, "Updating
TCP to Support Rate-Limited Traffic", RFC 7661,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7661, October 2015,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7661>.
[RFC8312] Rhee, I., Xu, L., Ha, S., Zimmermann, A., Eggert, L., and
R. Scheffenegger, "CUBIC for Fast Long-Distance Networks",
RFC 8312, DOI 10.17487/RFC8312, February 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8312>.
[RFC8511] Khademi, N., Welzl, M., Armitage, G., and G. Fairhurst,
"TCP Alternative Backoff with ECN (ABE)", RFC 8511,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8511, December 2018,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8511>.
[RFC9000] Iyengar, J., Ed. and M. Thomson, Ed., "QUIC: A UDP-Based
Multiplexed and Secure Transport", RFC 9000,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9000, May 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9000>.
[SXEZ19] Sun, W., Xu, L., Elbaum, S., and D. Zhao, "Model-Agnostic
and Efficient Exploration of Numerical Congestion Control
State Space of Real-World TCP Implementations", IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 1990-2004,
DOI 10.1109/tnet.2021.3078161, October 2021,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/tnet.2021.3078161>.
[XHR04] Xu, L., Harfoush, K., and I. Rhee, "Binary increase
congestion control (BIC) for fast long-distance networks",
IEEE INFOCOM 2004, DOI 10.1109/infcom.2004.1354672,
February 2005,
<https://doi.org/10.1109/infcom.2004.1354672>.
Appendix A. Acknowledgments
Richard Scheffenegger and Alexander Zimmermann originally co-authored
[RFC8312].
These individuals suggested improvements to this document:
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* Bob Briscoe
* Christian Huitema
* Gorry Fairhurst
* Jonathan Morton
* Juhamatti Kuusisaari
* Junho Choi
* Markku Kojo
* Martin Thomson
* Matt Mathis
* Matt Olson
* Michael Welzl
* Mirja Kühlewind
* Mohit P. Tahiliani
* Neal Cardwell
* Praveen Balasubramanian
* Randall Stewart
* Richard Scheffenegger
* Rod Grimes
* Tom Henderson
* Tom Petch
* Wesley Rosenblum
* Yoshifumi Nishida
* Yuchung Cheng
Appendix B. Evolution of CUBIC
B.1. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-09
* Improve text for Reno friendliness, multiplicative decrease and
reference to HLRX07. (#152 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
pull/152))
B.2. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-08
* Fix the text specifying when alpha_cubic SHOULD be set to 1 to
indicate this should happen when cwnd >= prior_cwnd rather than
cwnd >= W_max, since these are different in the fast convergence
case (#146 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/pull/146))
* Restrict use of _cwnd_ directly on a congestion event (#148
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/pull/148))
B.3. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-07
* Document the WG discussion and decision around [RFC5033] and
[RFC2914] (#145 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/pull/145))
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B.4. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-06
* RFC7661 is safe even when cwnd grows beyond rwnd (#143
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/143))
B.5. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-05
* Clarify meaning of "application-limited" in Section 5.8 (#137
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/137))
* Create new subsections for spurious timeouts and spurious loss via
ACK (#90 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/90))
* Brief discussion of convergence in Section 5.6 (#96
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/96))
* Add more test results to Section 5 and update some references (#91
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/91))
* Change wording around setting ssthresh (#131
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/131))
B.6. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-04
* Fix incorrect math (#106 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/106))
* Update RFC5681 (#99 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/99))
* Rephrase text around algorithmic alternatives, add HyStart++ (#85
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/85), #86
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/86), #90
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/90))
* Clarify what we mean by "new ACK" and use it in the text in more
places. (#101 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/101))
* Rewrite the Responses to Sudden or Transient Events section (#98
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/98))
* Remove confusing text about _cwnd_start_ in Section 4.2 (#100
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/100))
* Change terminology from "AIMD" to "Reno" (#108
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/108))
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* Moved MUST NOT from app-limited section to main cubic AI section
(#97 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/97))
* Clarify cwnd decrease during multiplicative decrease (#102
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/102))
* Clarify text around queuing and slow adaptation of CUBIC in
wireless environments (#94 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/94))
* Set lower bound of cwnd to 1 MSS and use retransmit timer
thereafter (#83 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/83))
* Use FlightSize instead of cwnd to update ssthresh (#114
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/114))
B.7. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-03
* Remove reference from abstract (#82
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/pull/82))
B.8. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-02
* Description of packet loss rate _p_ (#65
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/65))
* Clarification of TCP Friendly Equation for ABC and Delayed ACK
(#66 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/66))
* add applicability to QUIC and SCTP (#61
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/61))
* clarity on setting alpha__aimd_ to 1 (#68
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/68))
* introduce alpha__cubic_ (#64 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/64))
* clarify _cwnd_ growth in convex region (#69
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/69))
* add guidance for using bytes and mention that segments count is
decimal (#67 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/67))
* add loss events detected by RACK and QUIC loss detection (#62
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/62))
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B.9. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-01
* address Michael Scharf's editorial suggestions. (#59
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/59))
* add "Note to the RFC Editor" about removing underscores
B.10. Since draft-ietf-tcpm-rfc8312bis-00
* use updated xml2rfc with better text rendering of subscripts
B.11. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-03
* fix spelling nits
* rename to draft-ietf
* define _W_max_ more clearly
B.12. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-02
* add definition for segments_acked and alpha__aimd_. (#47
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/47))
* fix a mistake in _W_max_ calculation in the fast convergence
section. (#51 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/51))
* clarity on setting _ssthresh_ and _cwnd_start_ during
multiplicative decrease. (#53 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/53))
B.13. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-01
* rename TCP-Friendly to AIMD-Friendly and rename Standard TCP to
AIMD TCP to avoid confusion as CUBIC has been widely used on the
Internet. (#38 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/38))
* change introductory text to reflect the significant broader
deployment of CUBIC on the Internet. (#39
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/39))
* rephrase introduction to avoid referring to variables that have
not been defined yet.
B.14. Since draft-eggert-tcpm-rfc8312bis-00
* acknowledge former co-authors (#15
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/15))
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* prevent _cwnd_ from becoming less than two (#7
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/7))
* add list of variables and constants (#5
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/5), #6
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/6))
* update _K_'s definition and add bounds for CUBIC _target_ _cwnd_
[SXEZ19] (#1 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/1), #14
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/14))
* update _W_est_ to use AIMD approach (#20
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/20))
* set alpha__aimd_ to 1 once _W_est_ reaches _W_max_ (#2
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/2))
* add Vidhi as co-author (#17 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/17))
* note for Fast Recovery during _cwnd_ decrease due to congestion
event (#11 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/11))
* add section for spurious congestion events (#23
(https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/issues/23))
* initialize _W_est_ after timeout and remove variable
_W_(last_max)_ (#28 (https://github.com/NTAP/rfc8312bis/
issues/28))
B.15. Since RFC8312
* converted to Markdown and xml2rfc v3
* updated references (as part of the conversion)
* updated author information
* various formatting changes
* move to Standards Track
B.16. Since the Original Paper
CUBIC has gone through a few changes since the initial release
[HRX08] of its algorithm and implementation. This section highlights
the differences between the original paper and [RFC8312].
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* The original paper [HRX08] includes the pseudocode of CUBIC
implementation using Linux's pluggable congestion control
framework, which excludes system-specific optimizations. The
simplified pseudocode might be a good source to start with and
understand CUBIC.
* [HRX08] also includes experimental results showing its performance
and fairness.
* The definition of beta__cubic_ constant was changed in [RFC8312].
For example, beta__cubic_ in the original paper was the window
decrease constant while [RFC8312] changed it to CUBIC
multiplication decrease factor. With this change, the current
congestion window size after a congestion event in [RFC8312] was
beta__cubic_ * _W_max_ while it was (1-beta__cubic_) * _W_max_ in
the original paper.
* Its pseudocode used _W_(last_max)_ while [RFC8312] used _W_max_.
* Its AIMD-friendly window was _W_tcp_ while [RFC8312] used _W_est_.
Authors' Addresses
Lisong Xu
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Lincoln, NE 68588-0115
United States of America
Email: xu@unl.edu
URI: https://cse.unl.edu/~xu/
Sangtae Ha
University of Colorado at Boulder
Department of Computer Science
Boulder, CO 80309-0430
United States of America
Email: sangtae.ha@colorado.edu
URI: https://netstech.org/sangtaeha/
Injong Rhee
Bowery Farming
151 W 26TH Street, 12TH Floor
New York, NY 10001
United States of America
Email: injongrhee@gmail.com
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Vidhi Goel
Apple Inc.
One Apple Park Way
Cupertino, California 95014
United States of America
Email: vidhi_goel@apple.com
Lars Eggert (editor)
NetApp
Stenbergintie 12 B
FI-02700 Kauniainen
Finland
Email: lars@eggert.org
URI: https://eggert.org/
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