LEDBAT++: Congestion Control for Background Traffic
draft-irtf-iccrg-ledbat-plus-plus-05

Network Working Group                                 P. Balasubramanian
Internet-Draft                                                 Confluent
Intended status: Experimental                                 O. Ertugay
Expires: 30 June 2026                                           D. Havey
                                                               Microsoft
                                                              M. Bagnulo
                                        Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
                                                        27 December 2025

          LEDBAT++: Congestion Control for Background Traffic
                  draft-irtf-iccrg-ledbat-plus-plus-05

Abstract

   This memo describes LEDBAT++, a set of enhancements to the LEDBAT
   (Low Extra Delay Background Transport) congestion control algorithm
   for background traffic.  The LEDBAT congestion control algorithm has
   several shortcomings that prevent it from working effectively in
   practice.  LEDBAT++ extends LEDBAT by adding a set of improvements,
   including reduced congestion window gain, modified slow-start,
   multiplicative decrease and periodic slowdowns.  This set of
   improvement mitigates the known issues with the LEDBAT algorithm,
   such as latency drift, latecomer advantage and inter-LEDBAT fairness.
   LEDBAT++ has been implemented as a TCP congestion control algorithm
   in the Windows operating system.  LEDBAT++ has been deployed in
   production at scale on a variety of networks and been experimentally
   verified to achieve the original stated goals of LEDBAT.  This
   document is a product of the Internet Congestion Control Research
   Group (ICCRG) of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 30 June 2026.

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Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2025 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
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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  LEDBAT Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.1.  Latecomer advantage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
     3.2.  Inter-LEDBAT fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.3.  Latency drift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     3.4.  Low latency competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.5.  Dependency on one-way delay measurements  . . . . . . . .   5
   4.  LEDBAT++ Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.1.  Slower than Reno increase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     4.2.  Multiplicative decrease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.3.  Modified slow start . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     4.4.  Initial and periodic slowdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     4.5.  Use of Round Trip Time instead of one way delay . . . . .   8
   5.  Experiment Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.1.  Status of the experiment at the time of this writing. . .   9
   6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   7.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11

1.  Introduction

   Operating systems and applications use background connections for a
   variety of tasks, such as software updates, large media downloads,
   telemetry, or error reporting.  These connections should operate
   without affecting the general usability of the system.  Usability is
   measured in terms of available network bandwidth and network latency.
   LEDBAT [RFC6817] is designed to minimize the impact of lower than
   best effort connections on the latency and bandwidth of other
   connections.  To achieve that, each LEDBAT connection monitors the

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   transmission delay of packets, and compares them to the minimum delay
   observed on the connection.  The difference between the transmission
   delay and the minimum delay is used as an estimate of the queuing
   delay.  If the queuing delay is above a target, LEDBAT directs the
   connection to reduce its bandwidth.  If the queuing delay is below
   the target, the connection is allowed to increase its transmission
   rate.  The bandwidth increase and decrease are proportional to the
   difference between the observed values and the target.  LEDBAT reacts
   to packet losses and other congestion signals in the same way as
   standard TCP.

   However, there are a few issues that plague LEDBAT, some previously
   documented, and some discovered by experiments.  LEDBAT++ adds
   additional mechanisms on top of (and in some cases deviates from)
   LEDBAT to overcome these problems.  The remaining sections describe
   the problems and the mechanisms in detail.

   The consensus of the Internet Congestion Control Research Group
   (ICCRG) is to publish this document to encourage further
   experimentation and review of LEDBAT++. The objective of this RFC is
   to document LEDBAT++ enhancements on top of the base LEDBAT
   implementation and encourage its use so the algorithm can be further
   verified and improved.  This document is not an IETF product and is
   not a standard.  The status of this document is experimental.  In
   section 5 titled Experiment Considerations, we describe the purpose
   of the experiment and its current status.

2.  Terminology

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].

3.  LEDBAT Issues

   This section lists some known LEDBAT issues from existing literature
   and also list some new problems observed as a result of
   experimentation with an implementation of [RFC6817].

3.1.  Latecomer advantage

   Delay based congestion control protocols like LEDBAT are known to
   suffer from a latecomer advantage.  When the newcomer establishes a
   connection, the transmission delay that it encounters incorporates
   queuing delay caused by the existing connections.  The newcomer
   considers this large delay the minimum, and thereby increases its
   transmission rate while other LEDBAT connections slow down.
   Eventually, the latecomer will end up using the entire bandwidth of

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   the connection.  Standard TCP congestion control as described in
   [RFC9293] and [RFC5681], causes some queuing, the LEDBAT delay
   measurements incorporate that queuing, and the base delay as measured
   by the connection is thus set to a larger value than the actual
   minimum.  As a result, the queues remain mostly full.  In some cases,
   this queuing persists even after the closing of the competing TCP
   connection.  This phenomenon was already known during the design of
   LEDBAT, but there is no mitigation in the LEDBAT design.  The
   designers of the protocol relied instead on the inherent burstiness
   of network traffic.  Small gaps in transmission schedules would allow
   the latecomer to measure the true delay of the connection.  This
   reasoning is not satisfactory because workloads can upload large
   amount of data, and would not always see such gaps.

3.2.  Inter-LEDBAT fairness

   The latecomer advantage is caused by the improper evaluation of the
   base delay, with the latecomer using a larger value than the
   preexisting connections.  However, even when all competing
   connections have a correct evaluation of the base delay, some of them
   will receive a larger share of resources.  The reason for that
   persistent unfairness is explained in [RethinkLEDBAT].  LEDBAT
   specifies proportional feedback based on a ratio between the measured
   queuing delay and a target.  Proportional feedback uses both additive
   increases and additive decreases.  This does stabilize the queue
   sizes, but it does not guarantee fair sharing between the competing
   connections.

3.3.  Latency drift

   LEDBAT estimates the base delay of a connection as the minimum of all
   observed transmission delays over a 10-minute interval.  It uses an
   interval rather than a measurement over the whole duration of the
   connection, because network conditions may change over time.  For
   example, an existing connection may be transparently rerouted over a
   longer path, with a longer transmission delay.  Keeping the old
   estimate would then cause LEDBAT to unnecessarily reduce the
   connection throughput.  However experiments show that this causes a
   ratcheting effect when LEDBAT connections are allowed to operate for
   a long time.  The delay feedback in LEDBAT causes the queuing delay
   to stabilize just below the target.  After an initial interval, all
   new measurements are equal to the initial transmission delay plus a
   fraction of the target.  Every 10 minutes, the measured base delay
   increases by that fraction of the target queuing delay, leading to
   potentially large values over time.

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3.4.  Low latency competition

   LEDBAT compares the observed queuing delays to a fixed target.  The
   target value cannot be set too low, because that would cause poor
   operation on slow networks.  In practice, it is set to 60ms, a value
   that allows proper operation of latency sensitive applications like
   VoIP.  But if the bottleneck buffer is small such that the queuing
   delay will never reach the target, then the LEDBAT connection behaves
   just like an ordinary connection.  It competes aggressively, and
   obtains the same share of the bandwidth as regular TCP connections.
   On high speed links the problem is exacerbated.

3.5.  Dependency on one-way delay measurements

   The LEDBAT algorithm requires use of one-way delay measurements.
   This makes it harder to use with transport protocols like TCP that
   have no reliable way to obtain one way delay measurements.  TCP
   timestamps do not standardize clock frequency, and the endpoints will
   need to rely on heuristics to guess the clock frequency of the remote
   peer to detect and correct for clock skew.  TCP timestamps do not
   include clock synchronization, and would need some non-standard
   invention to compensate for clock skew.  Any such mechanism is very
   fragile.

4.  LEDBAT++ Mechanisms

4.1.  Slower than Reno increase

   When the queuing delays are below the target delay, LEDBAT behaves
   like standard TCP [RFC9293].  LEDBAT introduces a GAIN parameter
   which can be set between 0 and 1.  In order to solve the low latency
   competition problem, LEDBAT++ makes the GAIN parameter dynamic.  When
   standard and reduced connections share the same bottleneck, they
   experience the same packet drop rate.  The GAIN value ensures that
   the throughput of the LEDBAT connection will be a fraction (1/SQRT(1/
   GAIN)) of the throughput of the regular connections.  Small values of
   GAIN work well when the base delay is small, and ensure that the
   LEDBAT connection will yield to regular connections in these
   networks.  However, small values of GAIN do not work well on long
   delay links.  In the absence of competing traffic, combining large
   base delays with small GAIN values causes the connection bandwidth to
   remain well under capacity for a long time.  In LEDBAT++, GAIN is a
   function of the ratio between the base delay and the target delay:

      GAIN = 1 / (min (16, CEIL (2*TARGET/base)))

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   where CEIL(X) is defined as the smallest integer larger than X.
   Implementations MAY experiment with the constant value 16 as a
   tradeoff between responsiveness and performance.

4.2.  Multiplicative decrease

   [RethinkLEDBAT] suggests combining additive increases and
   multiplicative decreases in order to solve the Inter-LEDBAT fairness
   problem.  It proposes to change the way LEDBAT increases and
   decreases the congestion window based on the ratio between the
   observed delay and the target.  Assume that the congestion window is
   changed once per roundtrip measurement.  In standard LEDBAT, the per
   RTT window when delay is less than target is:

      W += GAIN * (1 – delay/target)

   In LEDBAT++, with multiplicative decrease, the per RTT window when
   delay is less than target is:

      W += GAIN

   Similarly in standard LEDBAT, the per RTT window when the delay is
   higher than target is:

      W -= GAIN * (delay/target - 1)

   In LEDBAT++, with multiplicative decrease, the per RTT window delay
   is higher than target is:

      W += max( (GAIN – Constant * W * (delay/target - 1)), -W/2) )

   It is RECOMMENDED that the Constant be set to 1.  Implementations MAY
   experiment with this value.  If the connections have different
   estimates of the base delay, capping the multiplicative decrease to
   at most W/2 is required.  Otherwise, spikes in delay can cause the
   window to immediately drop to its minimal value.  LEDBAT++ sender
   MUST also ensure that the congestion window never decreases below 2
   packets, in order to avoid completely starving the connection.

4.3.  Modified slow start

   Traditional initial slow start can cause spikes in bandwidth usage.
   However skipping exponential congestion window increase results in
   really poor performance on long delay links.  LEDBAT++ applies the
   dynamic GAIN parameter to the congestion window increases.  In
   standard TCP operation, the congestion window increases for every ACK
   by exactly the amount of bytes acknowledged.  A LEDBAT++ sender
   increases the congestion window by that number multiplied by the

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   dynamic GAIN value.  In low latency links, this ensures that LEDBAT++
   connections ramp up slower than regular connections.  LEDBAT++ sender
   limits the initial window to 2 packets.  LEDBAT++ sender monitors the
   transmission delays during the slow start period.  If the queuing
   delay is larger than 3/4ths of the target delay, exit slow start and
   immediately move to the congestion avoidance phase.  After initial
   slow start, the increase of congestion window is bounded by the
   SSTHRESH estimate acquired during congestion avoidance, and the risk
   of creating congestion spikes is very low.  Exiting slow start on
   excessive delay SHOULD be applied only during the initial slow start.

4.4.  Initial and periodic slowdown

   The LEDBAT specification assumes that there will be natural gaps in
   traffic, and that during those gaps the observed delay corresponds to
   a state where the queues are empty.  However, there are workloads
   where the traffic is sustained for long periods.  This causes base
   delay estimates to be inaccurate and is one of the major reasons
   behind latency drift as well as the lack of inter-LEDBAT fairness.
   To ensure stability, LEDBAT++ forces these gaps, or slow down
   periods.  A slowdown is an interval during which the LEDBAT++
   connection voluntarily reduces its traffic, allowing queues to drain
   and transmission delay measurements to converge to the base delay.
   The slowdown works as follows:

   *  Upon entering slowdown, set SSTHRESH to the current version of the
      congestion window CWND, and then reduce CWND to 2 packets.

   *  Keep CWND frozen at 2 packets for 2 RTT.

   *  After 2 RTT, ramp up the congestion window according to the slow
      start algorithm, until the congestion window reaches SSTHRESH.

   Keeping the CWND frozen at 2 packets for 2 RTT allows the queues to
   drain, and is key to obtaining accurate delay measurements.  The
   initial slowdown starts shortly after the connection completes the
   initial slow start phase; 2 RTT after the initial slow start
   completes.  After the initial slowdown, LEDBAT++ sender performs
   periodic slowdowns.  The interval between slowdown is computed so
   that slowdown does not cause more than a 10% drop in the utilization
   of the bottleneck.  LEDBAT++ sender measures the duration of the
   slowdown, from the time of entry to the time at which the congestion
   window regrows to the previous SSTHRESH value.  The next slowdown is
   then scheduled to occur at 9 times this duration after the exit
   point.  The combination of initial and periodic slowdowns allows
   competing LEDBAT connections to obtain good estimates of the base
   delay, and when combined with multiplicative decrease solves both the
   latecomer advantage and the Inter-LEDBAT fairness problems.

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4.5.  Use of Round Trip Time instead of one way delay

   LEDBAT++ uses Round Trip Time measurements instead of one way delay.
   One possible shortcoming of round trip delay measurements is that
   they incorporate queuing delays in both directions.  This can lead to
   unnecessary slowdowns, such as slowing down an upload connection
   because a download is saturating the downlink but in practice this
   seems to benefit the workloads because the bottleneck link can carry
   ACK traffic in the other direction for the competing flows.  Round
   trip measurements also include the delay at the receiver between
   receiving a packet and sending the corresponding acknowledgement.
   These delays are normally quite small, except when the delayed
   acknowledgment logic kicks in.  Effect of delayed ACK can be
   particularly acute when the congestion window only includes a few
   packets, for example at the beginning of the connection.

   The problems of using one way delay are mitigated through a set of
   implementation choices.  First, LEDBAT++ sender enables the TCP
   Timestamp option, in order to obtain RTT samples with each
   acknowledgement.  A LEDBAT++ sender SHOULD filter the round trip
   measurements by using the minimum of the 4 most recent delay samples,
   as suggested in the LEDBAT specification.  Finally, the queueing
   delay target is set larger than the typical TCP maximum
   acknowledgement delay.  This avoids over reacting to a single delayed
   ACK measurement.  LEDBAT++ default delay target of 60ms is different
   from the 100ms value recommended in [RFC6817].

5.  Experiment Considerations

   The status of this document is Experimental.  The general purpose of
   the proposed experiment is to gain more experience running LEDBAT++
   over different network paths to see if the proposed LEDBAT++
   parameters perform well in different situations.  Specifically, we
   would like to learn about the following aspects of the LEDBAT++
   mechanism:

      - The impact of transparent proxies which prevent measurement of
      end-to-end delay and might interfere with the effective operation
      of LEDBAT++.

      - Interaction between LEDBAT++ and Active Queue Management
      techniques such as Codel, PIE and L4S.

      - How the LEDBAT++ should resume after a period during which there
      was no incoming traffic and the information about the rLEDBAT
      state information is potentially dated.

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5.1.  Status of the experiment at the time of this writing.

   LEDBAT++ is available in Microsoft's Windows 11 22H2 since October
   2023 [Windows11] and in Windows Server 2022 since September 2022
   [WindowsServer].

   In addition, LEDBAT++ has been deployed by Microsoft in wide scale in
   the following services:

      - BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service)

      - DO (Delivery Optimization) service

      - Windows update # using DO

      - Windows Store # using DO

      - OneDrive

      - Windows Error Reporting # wermgr.exe; werfault.exe

      - System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM)

      - Windows Media Player

      - Microsoft Office

      - Xbox (download games) # using DO

   An experimental evaluation of the LEDBAT++ algorithm is presented in
   [COMNET1].  Experiments involving the interaction of LEDBAT++ and BBR
   are presented in [COMNET2]

6.  Security Considerations

   LEDBAT++ enhances LEDBAT and inherits the general security
   considerations discussed in [RFC6817].

   LEDBAT++ uses the RTT measurements to modulate the rate of the
   sender.  An attacker wishing to starve a flow can introduce an
   artificial delay to the packets either by actually delaying the
   packets.  This would cause the rLEDBAT receiver to believe that a
   queue is building up and reduce the window.  Note that an attacker to
   do that must be on path, so if that is the case, it is probably more
   direct to simply drop the packets and achieve even a larger window
   reduction.

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7.  IANA Considerations

   This document has no actions for IANA.

8.  Acknowledgements

   The LEDBAT++ algorithm was designed and implemented by Osman Ertugay,
   Christian Huitema, Praveen Balasubramanian, and Daniel Havey.

   We would like to thank Reese Enghardt for the review and comments on
   earlier versions of this document.

   This work was supported by the EU through the StandICT project RXQ.

9.  References

   [COMNET1]  Bagnulo, M.B. and A.G. Garcia-Martinez, "An experimental
              evaluation of LEDBAT++", Computer Networks Volume 212,
              2022.

   [COMNET2]  Bagnulo, M.B. and A.G. Garcia-Martinez, "When less is
              more: BBR versus LEDBAT++", Computer Networks Volume 219,
              2022.

   [RethinkLEDBAT]
              Carofiglios, G., Muscariello, L., Rossi, D., Testa, C.,
              and S. Valenti, "Rethinking the Low Extra Delay Background
              Transport (LEDBAT) Protocol",  Computer Networks, Volume
              57, Issue 8, 4 June 2013, Pages 1838–1852, 2013,
              <http://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/~drossi/paper/
              rossi13comnet.pdf>.

   [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/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC5681]  Allman, M., Paxson, V., and E. Blanton, "TCP Congestion
              Control", RFC 5681, DOI 10.17487/RFC5681, September 2009,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5681>.

   [RFC6817]  Shalunov, S., Hazel, G., Iyengar, J., and M. Kuehlewind,
              "Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT)", RFC 6817,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6817, December 2012,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6817>.

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   [RFC9293]  Eddy, W., Ed., "Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)",
              STD 7, RFC 9293, DOI 10.17487/RFC9293, August 2022,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9293>.

   [Windows11]
              Forsmann, C.F., "What's new in Delivery Optimization",
              Microsoft Documentation https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
              us/windows/deployment/do/whats-new-do, 2023.

   [WindowsServer]
              Havey, D.H., "LEDBAT Background Data Transfer for
              Windows", Microsoft Blog 
              https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/networking-
              blog/ledbat-background-data-transfer-for-windows/ba-
              p/3639278, 2022.

Authors' Addresses

   Praveen Balasubramanian
   Confluent
   Email: pravb.ietf@gmail.com

   Osman Ertugay
   Microsoft
   Phone: +1 425 706 2684
   Email: osmaner@microsoft.com

   Daniel Havey
   Microsoft
   Email: dhavey@gmail.com

   Marcelo Bagnulo
   Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
   Email: marcelo@it.uc3m.es

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