Internet Engineering Task Force                                 S. Floyd
INTERNET DRAFT                                                      ICSI
draft-floyd-newreno-00.txt                             T. Henderson
                                                                  Boeing
                                                                May 2003


       The NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm



                          Status of this Memo


   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

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Abstract

   RFC 2581 [RFC2581] documents the following four intertwined TCP
   congestion control algorithms: Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, Fast
   Retransmit, and Fast Recovery.  RFC 2581 [RFC2581] explicitly allows
   certain modifications of these algorithms, including modifications
   that use the TCP Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) option [RFC2018],
   and modifications that respond to "partial acknowledgments" (ACKs
   which cover new data, but not all the data outstanding when loss was
   detected) in the absence of SACK.  The NewReno mechanism described in
   this document describes a specific algorithm for responding to
   partial acknowledgments, referred to as NewReno.  This response to
   partial acknowledgments was first proposed by Janey Hoe in [Hoe95].

   RFC 2582 [RFC2582] specified the NewReno mechanisms as Experimental



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draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   in 1999.  This document is a small revision of RFC 2582 intended to
   advance the NewReno mechanisms to Proposed Standard.  RFC 2581 notes
   that the Fast Retransmit/Fast Recovery algorithm specified in that
   document does not recover very efficiently from multiple losses in a
   single flight of packets, and that RFC 2582 contains one set of
   modifications to address this problem.

   NOTE TO THE RFC EDITOR:  PLEASE REMOVE THIS SECTION UPON PUBLICATION.
   Changes from RFC 2582:

   * Rephrasing and rearrangements of the text.

   * RFC 2582 described the Careful and Less Careful variants of
   NewReno, along with a default version that was neither Careful nor
   Less Careful, and recommended the Careful variant.  This document
   only specifies the Careful version.

   * RFC 2582 used two separate variables, "send_high" and "recover",
   and this document has merged them into a single variable "recover".

   * Added sections on "Comparisons between Reno and NewReno TCP", and
   on "Changes relative to RFC 2582".  The section on "Comparisons
   between Reno and NewReno TCP" includes a discussion of the one area
   where NewReno is known to perform worse than Reno or SACK, and that
   is in the response to reordering.

   * Moved all of the discussions of the Impatient and Slow-but-Steady
   variants to one place, and specified the Impatient variant (as in the
   default version in RFC 2582).

   * Added a section on Implementation issues for the data sender,
   mentioning maxburst_.

   * Added a paragraph about differences between RFC 2582 and [FF96].

   END OF NOTE TO RFC EDITOR

1. Introduction

   For the typical implementation of the TCP Fast Recovery algorithm
   described in [RFC2581] (first implemented in the 1990 BSD Reno
   release, and referred to as the Reno algorithm in [FF96]), the TCP
   data sender only retransmits a packet after a retransmit timeout has
   occurred, or after three duplicate acknowledgements have arrived
   triggering the Fast Retransmit algorithm.  A single retransmit
   timeout might result in the retransmission of several data packets,
   but each invocation of the Fast Retransmit algorithm in RFC 2581
   leads to the retransmission of only a single data packet.



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 2]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   Problems can arise, therefore, when multiple packets have been
   dropped from a single window of data and the Fast Retransmit and Fast
   Recovery algorithms are invoked.  In this case, if the SACK option is
   available, the TCP sender has the information to make intelligent
   decisions about which packets to retransmit and which packets not to
   retransmit during Fast Recovery.  This document applies only for TCP
   connections that are unable to use the TCP Selective Acknowledgement
   (SACK) option, either because the option is not locally supported or
   because the TCP peer did not indicate a willingness to use SACK.

   In the absence of SACK, there is little information available to the
   TCP sender in making retransmission decisions during Fast Recovery.
   From the three duplicate acknowledgements, the sender infers a packet
   loss, and retransmits the indicated packet.  After this, the data
   sender could receive additional duplicate acknowledgements, as the
   data receiver acknowledges additional data packets that were already
   in flight when the sender entered Fast Retransmit.

   In the case of multiple packets dropped from a single window of data,
   the first new information available to the sender comes when the
   sender receives an acknowledgement for the retransmitted packet (that
   is, the packet retransmitted when Fast Retransmit was first entered).
   If there had been a single packet drop and no reordering, then the
   acknowledgement for this packet will acknowledge all of the packets
   transmitted before Fast Retransmit was entered.  However, when there
   were multiple packet drops, then the acknowledgement for the
   retransmitted packet will acknowledge some but not all of the packets
   transmitted before the Fast Retransmit.  We call this acknowledgement
   a partial acknowledgment.

   Along with several other suggestions, [Hoe95] suggested that during
   Fast Recovery the TCP data sender respond to a partial acknowledgment
   by inferring that the next in-sequence packet has been lost, and
   retransmitting that packet.  This document describes a modification
   to the Fast Recovery algorithm in RFC 2581 that incorporates a
   response to partial acknowledgements received during Fast Recovery.
   We call this modified Fast Recovery algorithm NewReno, because it is
   a slight but significant variation of the basic Reno algorithm in RFC
   2581.  This document does not discuss the other suggestions in
   [Hoe95] and [Hoe96], such as a change to the ssthresh parameter
   during Slow-Start, or the proposal to send a new packet for every two
   duplicate acknowledgements during Fast Recovery.  The version of
   NewReno in this document also draws on other discussions of NewReno
   in the literature [LM97].

   We do not claim that the NewReno version of Fast Recovery described
   here is an optimal modification of Fast Recovery for responding to
   partial acknowledgements, for TCP connections that are unable to use



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 3]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   SACK.  Based on our experiences with the NewReno modification in the
   NS simulator [NS] and with numerous implementations of NewReno, we
   believe that this modification improves the performance of the Fast
   Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms in a wide variety of
   scenarios.

2. Terminology and Definitions

   In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
   "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
   and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119
   and indicate requirement levels for compliant TCP implementations
   implementing the NewReno Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms
   described in this document.

   This document assumes that the reader is familiar with the terms
   SENDER MAXIMUM SEGMENT SIZE (SMSS), CONGESTION WINDOW (cwnd), and
   FLIGHT SIZE (FlightSize) defined in [RFC2581].  FLIGHT SIZE is
   defined as in [RFC2581] as follows:

      FLIGHT SIZE:
         The amount of data that has been sent but not yet acknowledged.

3. The Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms in NewReno

   The standard implementation of the Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery
   algorithms is given in [RFC2581].  The NewReno modification of these
   algorithms is given below.  The NewReno modification concerns the
   Fast Recovery procedure that begins when three duplicate ACKs are
   received and ends when either a retransmission timeout occurs or an
   ACK arrives that acknowledges all of the data up to and including the
   data that was outstanding when the Fast Recovery procedure began.

   The NewReno algorithm specified in this document differs from the
   implementation in [RFC2581] in the introduction of the variable
   "recover" in step 1, in the response to a partial or new
   acknowledgement in step 5, and in modifications to step 1 and the
   addition of step 6 for avoiding multiple Fast Retransmits caused by
   the retransmission of packets already received by the receiver.

   The algorithm specified in this document uses a variable "recover",
   whose initial value is the initial send sequence number.

   1)  When the third duplicate ACK is received and the sender is not
       already in the Fast Recovery procedure, check to see if the
       Cumulative Acknowledgement field covers more than "recover".
       If so, then set ssthresh to no more than the value given in
       equation 1 below.  (This is equation 3 from [RFC2581]).



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 4]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


         ssthresh = max (FlightSize / 2, 2*SMSS)           (1)

       In addition, record the highest sequence number transmitted in
       the variable "recover", and go to Step 2.

       If the Cumulative Acknowledgement field didn't cover more than
       "recover", then
       do not enter the Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery procedure.
       In particular, do not change ssthresh, do not go to Step 2 to
       retransmit the "lost" segment, and do not execute Step 3 upon
       subsequent duplicate ACKs.

   2)  Retransmit the lost segment and set cwnd to ssthresh plus 3*SMSS.
       This artificially "inflates" the congestion window by the number
       of segments (three) that have left the network and which the
       receiver has buffered.

   3)  For each additional duplicate ACK received, increment cwnd by
       SMSS.  This artificially inflates the congestion window in order
       to reflect the additional segment that has left the network.

   4)  Transmit a segment, if allowed by the new value of cwnd and the
       receiver's advertised window.

   5)  When an ACK arrives that acknowledges new data, this ACK could be
       the acknowledgment elicited by the retransmission from step 2, or
       elicited by a later retransmission.

       If this ACK acknowledges all of the data up to and including
       "recover", then the ACK acknowledges all the intermediate
       segments sent between the original transmission of the lost
       segment and the receipt of the third duplicate ACK.  Set cwnd to
       either (1) min (ssthresh, FlightSize + SMSS); or (2) ssthresh,
       where ssthresh is the value set in step 1; this is termed
       "deflating" the window.  (We note that "FlightSize" in step 1
       referred to the amount of data outstanding in step 1, when Fast
       Recovery was entered, while "FlightSize" in step 5 refers to the
       amount of data outstanding in step 5, when Fast Recovery is
       exited.) If the second option is selected, the implementation
       should take measures to avoid a possible burst of data, in case
       the amount of data outstanding in the network was much less than
       the new congestion window allows.  A simple mechanism is to limit
       the number of data packets that can be sent in response to a
       single acknowledgement.  (This is known as "maxburst_" in the NS
       simulator).  Exit the Fast Recovery procedure.

       If this ACK does *not* acknowledge all of the data up to and
       including "recover", then this is a partial ACK.  In this case,



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 5]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


       retransmit the first unacknowledged segment.  Deflate the
       congestion window by the amount of new data acknowledged, then
       add back one SMSS (if the partial ACK acknowledges at least one
       SMSS of new data) and send a new segment if permitted by the new
       value of cwnd.  This "partial window deflation" attempts to
       ensure that, when Fast Recovery eventually ends, approximately
       ssthresh amount of data will be outstanding in the network.  Do
       not exit the Fast Recovery procedure (i.e., if any duplicate ACKs
       subsequently arrive, execute Steps 3 and 4 above).

       For the first partial ACK that arrives during Fast Recovery, also
       reset the retransmit timer.

   6)  After a retransmit timeout, record the highest sequence number
       transmitted in the variable "recover" and exit the Fast
       Recovery procedure if applicable.

   Step 1 specifies a check that the Cumulative Acknowledgement field
   covers more than "recover".  Because the acknowledgement field
   contains the sequence number that the sender next expects to receive,
   the acknowledgement "ack_number" covers more than "recover" when:

     ack_number - one > recover.

   Note that in Step 5, the congestion window is deflated after a
   partial acknowledgement is received.  The congestion window was
   likely to have been inflated considerably when the partial
   acknowledgement was received.  In addition, depending on the original
   pattern of packet losses, the partial acknowledgement might
   acknowledge nearly a window of data.  In this case, if the congestion
   window was not deflated, the data sender might be able to send nearly
   a window of data back-to-back.

   This document does not specify the sender's response to duplicate
   ACKs when the Fast Retransmit/Fast Recovery algorithm is not invoked.
   This is addressed in other documents, such as those describing the
   Limited Transmit procedure [RFC3042].  This document also does not
   address issues of adjusting the duplicate acknowledgement threshold,
   but assumes the threshold of three duplicate acknowledgements
   currently specified in RFC 2581.

   As a final note, we would observe that in the absence of the SACK
   option, the data sender is working from limited information.  When
   the issue of recovery from multiple dropped packets from a single
   window of data is of particular importance, the best alternative
   would be to use the SACK option.





Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 6]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


4. Resetting the retransmit timer in response to partial
acknowledgements.

   One possible variant to the response to partial acknowledgements
   specified in Section 3 concerns when to reset the retransmit timer
   after a partial acknowledgement.  The algorithm in Section 3, Step 5,
   resets the retransmit timer only after the first partial ACK.  In
   this case, if a large number of packets were dropped from a window of
   data, the TCP data sender's retransmit timer will ultimately expire,
   and the TCP data sender will invoke Slow-Start.  (This is illustrated
   on page 12 of [F98].)  We call this the Impatient variant of NewReno.

   In contrast, the NewReno simulations in [FF96] illustrate the
   algorithm described above with the modification that the retransmit
   timer is reset after each partial acknowledgement.  We call this the
   Slow-but-Steady variant of NewReno.  In this case, for a window with
   a large number of packet drops, the TCP data sender retransmits at
   most one packet per roundtrip time.  (This behavior is illustrated in
   the New-Reno TCP simulation of Figure 5 in [FF96], and on page 11 of
   [F98].  The tests "../../ns test-suite-newreno.tcl newreno1_B0" and
   "../../ns test-suite-newreno.tcl newreno1_B" in the NS simulator also
   illustrate the Slow-but-Steady and the Impatient variants of NewReno,
   respectively.)

   When N packets have been dropped from a window of data for a large
   value of N, the Slow-but-Steady variant can remain in Fast Recovery
   for N round-trip times, retransmitting one more dropped packet each
   round-trip time; for these scenarios, the Impatient variant gives a
   faster recovery and better performance.  One can also construct
   scenarios where the Slow-but-Steady variant would give better
   performance, where only a small number of packets are dropped, the
   RTO is sufficiently small that the retransmit timer expires, and
   performance would have been better without a retransmit timeout.
   Thus, neither of these variants are optimal; our recommendation is
   for the Impatient variant, as specified in Section 3 of this
   document.

   One possibility for a more optimal algorithm would be one that
   recovered from multiple packet drops as quickly as does slow-start,
   while resetting the retransmit timers after each partial
   acknowledgement, as described in the section below.  We note,
   however, that there is a limitation to the potential performance in
   this case in the absence of the SACK option.

5. Retransmissions after a partial acknowledgement.

   One possible variant to the response to partial acknowledgements
   specified in Section 3 would be to retransmit more than one packet



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 7]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   after each partial acknowledgement, and to reset the retransmit timer
   after each retransmission.  The algorithm specified in Section 3
   retransmits a single packet after each partial acknowledgement.  This
   is the most conservative alternative, in that it is the least likely
   to result in an unnecessarily-retransmitted packet.  A variant that
   would recover faster from a window with many packet drops would be to
   effectively Slow-Start, retransmitting two packets after each partial
   acknowledgement.  Such an approach would take less than N roundtrip
   times to recover from N losses [Hoe96].  However, in the absence of
   SACK, recovering as quickly as slow-start introduces the likelihood
   of unnecessarily retransmitting packets, and this could significantly
   complicate the recovery mechanisms.

   We note that the response to partial acknowledgements specified in
   Section 3 of this document and in RFC 2582 differs from the response
   in [FF96], even though both approaches only retransmit one packet in
   response to a partial acknowledgement.  Step 5 of Section 3 specifies
   that the TCP sender responds to a partial ACK by deflating the
   congestion window by the amount of new data acknowledged, then adding
   back one SMSS if the partial ACK acknowledges at least one SMSS of
   new data, and sending a new segment if permitted by the new value of
   cwnd.  Thus, only one previously-sent packet is retransmitted in
   response to each partial acknowledgement, but additional new packets
   might be transmitted as well, depending on the amount of new data
   acknowledged by the partial acknowledgement.  In contrast, the
   variant of NewReno illustrated in [FF96] simply set the congestion
   window to ssthresh when a partial acknowledgement was received.  The
   approach in [FF96] is more conservative, and does not attempt to
   accurately track the actual number of outstanding packets after a
   partial acknowledgement is received.  While either of these
   approaches gives acceptable performance, the variant specified in
   Section 3 recovers more smoothly when multiple packets are dropped
   from a window of data.  (The [FF96] behavior can be seen in the NS
   simulator by setting the variable "partial_window_deflation_" for
   "Agent/TCP/Newreno" to 0, and the behavior specified in Section 3 is
   achieved by setting "partial_window_deflation_" to 1.)

6. Avoiding Multiple Fast Retransmits

   This section describes the motivation for the sender's state variable
   "recover".

   In the absence of the SACK option, a duplicate acknowledgement
   carries no information to identify the data packet or packets at the
   TCP data receiver that triggered that duplicate acknowledgement.  The
   TCP data sender is unable to distinguish between a duplicate
   acknowledgement that results from a lost or delayed data packet, and
   a duplicate acknowledgement that results from the sender's



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 8]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   retransmission of a data packet that had already been received at the
   TCP data receiver.  Because of this, multiple segment losses from a
   single window of data can sometimes result in unnecessary multiple
   Fast Retransmits (and multiple reductions of the congestion window)
   [F94].

   With the Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms in Reno TCP,
   the performance problems caused by multiple Fast Retransmits are
   relatively minor compared to the potential problems with Tahoe TCP,
   which does not implement Fast Recovery.  Nevertheless, unnecessary
   Fast Retransmits can occur with Reno TCP unless some explicit
   mechanism is added to avoid this, such as the use of the "recover"
   variable.  (This modification is called "bugfix" in [F98], and is
   illustrated on pages 7 and 9.  Unnecessary Fast Retransmits for Reno
   without "bugfix" is illustrated on page 6 of [F98].)

   Section 3 of RFC 2582 defined a default variant of NewReno TCP that
   did not use the variable "recover", and did not check if duplicate
   ACKs cover the variable "recover" before invoking Fast Retransmit.
   With this default variant from RFC 2582, the problem of multiple Fast
   Retransmits from a single window of data can occur after a Retransmit
   Timeout (as in page 8 of [F98]) or in scenarios with reordering (as
   in the validation test "./test-all-newreno newreno5_noBF" in
   directory "tcl/test" of the NS simulator.  This gives performance
   similar to that on page 8 of [F03].)  RFC 2582 also defined Careful
   and Less Careful variants of the NewReno algorithm, and recommended
   the Careful variant.

   The algorithm specified in Section 3 of this document corresponds to
   the Careful variant of NewReno TCP from RFC 2582, and eliminates the
   problem of multiple Fast Retransmits.  This algorithm uses the
   variable "recover", whose initial value is the initial send sequence
   number.  After each retransmit timeout, the highest sequence number
   transmitted so far is recorded in the variable "recover".

   If, after a retransmit timeout, the TCP data sender retransmits three
   consecutive packets that have already been received by the data
   receiver, then the TCP data sender will receive three duplicate
   acknowledgements that do not cover more than "recover".  In this
   case, the duplicate acknowledgements are not an indication of a new
   instance of congestion.  They are simply an indication that the
   sender has unnecessarily retransmitted at least three packets.

   We note that if the TCP data sender receives three duplicate
   acknowledgements that do not cover more than "recover", the sender
   does not know whether these duplicate acknowledgements resulted from
   a new packet drop or not.  For a TCP that implements the algorithm
   specified in Section 3 of this document, the sender does not infer a



Floyd & Henderson                                               [Page 9]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   packet drop from duplicate acknowledgements in these circumstances.
   As always, the retransmit timer is the backup mechanism for inferring
   packet loss in this case.

7. Implementation issues for the data receiver.

   [RFC2581] specifies that "Out-of-order data segments SHOULD be
   acknowledged immediately, in order to accelerate loss recovery."
   Neal Cardwell has noted that some data receivers do not send an
   immediate acknowledgement when they send a partial acknowledgment,
   but instead wait first for their delayed acknowledgement timer to
   expire [C98].  As [C98] notes, this severely limits the potential
   benefit from NewReno by delaying the receipt of the partial
   acknowledgement at the data sender.  Our recommendation is that the
   data receiver send an immediate acknowledgement for an out-of-order
   segment, even when that out-of-order segment fills a hole in the
   buffer.

8. Implementation issues for the data sender.

   In Section 3, Step 5 above, it is noted that implementations should
   take measures to avoid a possible burst of data when leaving Fast
   Recovery, in case the amount of new data that the sender is eligible
   to send due to the new value of the congestion window is large.  This
   can arise during NewReno when ACKs are lost or treated as pure window
   updates, thereby causing the sender to underestimate the number of
   new segments that can be sent during the recovery procedure.  One
   simple mechanism to avoid a burst of data when leaving Fast Recovery
   is to limit the number of data packets that can be sent in response
   to a single acknowledgment.  (This is known as "maxburst_" in the ns
   simulator.)

9. Simulations

   Simulations with NewReno are illustrated with the validation test
   "tcl/test/test-all-newreno" in the NS simulator.  The command
   "../../ns test-suite-newreno.tcl reno" shows a simulation with Reno
   TCP, illustrating the data sender's lack of response to a partial
   acknowledgement.  In contrast, the command "../../ns test-suite-
   newreno.tcl newreno_B" shows a simulation with the same scenario
   using the NewReno algorithms described in this paper.

10. Comparisons between Reno and NewReno TCP.

   As we stated in the introduction, we believe that the NewReno
   modification described in this document improves the performance of
   the Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms of Reno TCP in a
   wide variety of scenarios.  This has been discussed in some depth in



Floyd & Henderson                                              [Page 10]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   [FF96], which illustrates Reno TCP's poor performance when multiple
   packets are dropped from a window of data and also illustrates
   NewReno TCP's good performance in that scenario.

   We do, however, know of one scenario where Reno TCP gives better
   performance than NewReno TCP, that we are describe here for the sake
   of completeness.  Consider a scenario with no packet loss, but with
   sufficient reordering that the TCP sender receives three duplicate
   acknowledgements.  This will trigger the Fast Retransmit and Fast
   Recovery algorithms.  With Reno TCP or with Sack TCP, this will
   result in the unnecessary retransmission of a single packet, combined
   with a halving of the congestion window (shown on pages 4 and 6 of
   [F03]).  With NewReno TCP, however, this reordering will also result
   in the unnecessary retransmission of an entire window of data (shown
   on page 5 of [F03]).

   While Reno TCP performs better than NewReno TCP in the presence of
   reordering, NewReno's superior performance in the presence of
   multiple packet drops generally outweighs its less optimal
   performance in the presence of reordering.  (Sack TCP is the
   preferred solution, with good performance in both scenarios.) This
   document recommends the Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms
   of NewReno TCP instead of those of Reno TCP for those TCP connections
   that do not support SACK.  We would also note that NewReno's Fast
   Retransmit and Fast Recovery mechanisms are widely deployed in TCP
   implementations in the Internet today, as documented in [PF01].  For
   example, tests of TCP implementations in several thousand web servers
   in 2001 showed that for those TCP connections where the web browser
   was not SACK-capable, more web servers used the Fast Retransmit and
   Fast Recovery algorithms of NewReno than those of Reno or Tahoe TCP
   [PF01].

11. Changes relative to RFC 2582

   The purpose of this document is to advance the NewReno's Fast
   Retransmit and Fast Recovery algorithms in RFC 2582 to Proposed
   Standard.

   The main change in this document relative to RFC 2582 is to specify
   the Careful variant of NewReno's Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery
   algorithms.  The base algorithm described in RFC 2582 did not attempt
   to avoid unnecessary multiple Fast Retransmits that can occur after a
   timeout (described in more detail in the section above).  However,
   RFC 2582 also defined "Careful" and "Less Careful" variants that
   avoid these unnecessary Fast Retransmits, and recommended the Careful
   variant.  This document specifies the previously-named "Careful"
   variant as the basic version of NewReno.  As described below, this
   algorithm uses a variable "recover", whose initial value is the send



Floyd & Henderson                                              [Page 11]


draft-floyd-newreno                                             May 2003


   sequence number.

   The algorithm specified in Section 3 checks whether the
   acknowledgement field of a partial acknowledgement covers *more* than
   "recover".  Another possible variant would be to require simply that
   the acknowledgement field *cover* "recover" before initiating another
   Fast Retransmit.  We called this the Less Careful variant in RFC
   2582.

   There are two separate scenarios in which the TCP sender could
   receive three duplicate acknowledgements acknowledging "recover" but
   no more than "recover".  One scenario would be that the data sender
   transmitted four packets with sequence numbers higher than "recover",
   that the first packet was dropped in the network, and the following
   three packets triggered three duplicate acknowledgements
   acknowledging "recover".  The second scenario would be that the
   sender unnecessarily retransmitted three packets below "recover", and
   that these three packets triggered three duplicate acknowledgements
   acknowledging "recover".  In the absence of SACK, the TCP sender in
   unable to distinguish between these two scenarios.

   For the Careful variant of Fast Retransmit, the data sender would
   have to wait for a retransmit timeout in the first scenario, but
   would not have an unnecessary Fast Retransmit in the second scenario.
   For the Less Careful variant to Fast Retransmit, the data sender
   would Fast Retransmit as desired in the first scenario, and would
   unnecessarily Fast Retransmit in the second scenario.  This document
   only specifies the Careful variant in Section 3.  Unnecessary Fast
   Retransmits with the Less Careful variant in scenarios with
   reordering are illustrated in page 8 of [F03].

12. Conclusions

   This document specifies the NewReno Fast Retransmit and Fast Recovery
   algorithms for TCP.  This NewReno modification to TCP can be
   important even for TCP implementations that support the SACK option,
   because the SACK option can only be used for TCP connections when
   both TCP end-nodes support the SACK option.  NewReno performs better
   than Reno (RFC 2581) in a number of scenarios discussed herein.

   A number of options to the basic algorithm presented in Section 3 are
   also described.  These include the handling of the retransmission
   timer (Section 4), the response to partial acknowledgments (Section
   5), and the value of the congestion window when leaving Fast Recovery
   (section 3, step 5).  Our belief is that the differences between
   these variants of NewReno are small compared to the differences
   between Reno and NewReno.  That is, the important thing is to
   implement NewReno instead of Reno, for a TCP connection without SACK;



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   it is less important exactly which of the variants of NewReno is
   implemented.

13. Acknowledgements

   Many thanks to Anil Agarwal, Mark Allman, Armando Caro, Vern Paxson,
   Kacheong Poon, Keyur Shah, and Bernie Volz for detailed feedback on
   this document or on its precursor RFC 2582.











































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14. References

   Normative References

   [RFC2018] M. Mathis, J. Mahdavi, S. Floyd, A. Romanow, "TCP Selective
   Acknowledgement Options", RFC 2018, October 1996.

   [RFC2581] W. Stevens, M. Allman, and V. Paxson, "TCP Congestion
   Control", RFC 2581, April 1999.

   [RFC2582] S. Floyd and T. Henderson, The NewReno Modification to
   TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm, RFC 2582, April 1999.

   [RFC3042] M. Allman, H. Balakrishnan, and S. Floyd, Enhancing TCP's
   Loss Recovery Using Limited Transmit, RFC 3042, January 2001.

   Informative References

   [C98] Neal Cardwell, "delayed ACKs for retransmitted packets: ouch!".
   November 1998.  Email to the tcpimpl mailing list, Message-ID
   "Pine.LNX.4.02A.9811021421340.26785-100000@sake.cs.washington.edu",
   archived at "http://tcp-impl.lerc.nasa.gov/tcp-impl".

   [F98] Sally Floyd.  Revisions to RFC 2001.  Presentation to the
   TCPIMPL Working Group, August 1998.  URLs
   "ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/talks/sf-tcpimpl-aug98.ps" and
   "ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/talks/sf-tcpimpl-aug98.pdf".

   [F03] Sally Floyd.  Moving NewReno from Experimental to Proposed
   Standard?  Presentation to the TSVWG Working Group, March 2003.  URLs
   " "http://www.icir.org/floyd/talks/newreno-Mar03.ps" and
   "http://www.icir.org/floyd/talks/newreno-Mar03.pdf".

   [FF96] Kevin Fall and Sally Floyd.  Simulation-based Comparisons of
   Tahoe, Reno and SACK TCP.  Computer Communication Review, July 1996.
   URL "ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/sacks.ps.Z".

   [F94] S. Floyd, TCP and Successive Fast Retransmits. Technical
   report, October 1994.  URL
   "ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/fastretrans.ps".

   [Hen98] Tom Henderson, Re: NewReno and the 2001 Revision. September
   1998.  Email to the tcpimpl mailing list, Message ID
   "Pine.BSI.3.95.980923224136.26134A-100000@raptor.CS.Berkeley.EDU",
   archived at "http://tcp-impl.lerc.nasa.gov/tcp-impl".

   [Hoe95] J. Hoe, Startup Dynamics of TCP's Congestion Control and
   Avoidance Schemes. Master's Thesis, MIT, 1995.  URL "http://ana-



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   www.lcs.mit.edu/anaweb/ps-papers/hoe-thesis.ps".

   [Hoe96] J. Hoe, Improving the Start-up Behavior of a Congestion
   Control Scheme for TCP.  In ACM SIGCOMM, August 1996.  URL
   "http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm96/program.html".

   [LM97] Dong Lin and Robert Morris, "Dynamics of Random Early
   Detection", SIGCOMM 97, September 1997.  URL
   "http://www.acm.org/sigcomm/sigcomm97/program.html".

   [NS] The Network Simulator (NS). URL "http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/".

   [PF01] J. Padhye and S. Floyd,  Identifying the TCP Behavior of Web
   Servers.  June 2001, SIGCOMM 2001.

15. Security Considerations

   RFC 2581 discusses general security considerations concerning TCP
   congestion control.  This document describes a specific algorithm
   that conforms with the congestion control requirements of RFC 2581,
   and so those considerations apply to this algorithm, too.  There are
   no known additional security concerns for this specific algorithm.

AUTHORS' ADDRESSES


   Sally Floyd
   International Computer Science Institute

   Phone: +1 (510) 666-2989
   Email: floyd@acm.org
   URL: http://www.icir.org/floyd/

   Tom Henderson
   The Boeing Company

   Email: thomas.r.henderson@boeing.com














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