Internet Engineering Task Force P. Sarolahti
INTERNET DRAFT Nokia Research Center
File: draft-ietf-tcpm-frto-00.txt M. Kojo
University of Helsinki
May, 2004
Expires: November, 2004
F-RTO: An Algorithm for Detecting
Spurious Retransmission Timeouts with TCP and SCTP
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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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Spurious retransmission timeouts cause suboptimal TCP performance,
because they often result in unnecessary retransmission of the last
window of data. This document describes the F-RTO detection algorithm
for detecting spurious TCP retransmission timeouts. F-RTO is a TCP
sender only algorithm that does not require any TCP options to
operate. After retransmitting the first unacknowledged segment
triggered by a timeout, the F-RTO algorithm at a TCP sender monitors
the incoming acknowledgments to determine whether the timeout was
spurious and to decide whether to send new segments or retransmit
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unacknowledged segments. The algorithm effectively helps to avoid
additional unnecessary retransmissions and thereby improves TCP
performance in case of a spurious timeout. The F-RTO algorithm can
also be applied to SCTP.
Terminology
The keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD,
SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL, when they appear in this
document, are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
1. Introduction
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) [Pos81] has two methods for
triggering retransmissions. First, the TCP sender relies on incoming
duplicate ACKs, which indicate that the receiver is missing some of
the data. After a required number of successive duplicate ACKs have
arrived at the sender, it retransmits the first unacknowledged
segment [APS99] and continues with a loss recovery algorithm such as
NewReno [FHG04] or SACK-based loss recovery [BAFW03]. Second, the TCP
sender maintains a retransmission timer which triggers retransmission
of segments, if they have not been acknowledged before the
retransmission timeout (RTO) expires. When the retransmission timeout
occurs, the TCP sender enters the RTO recovery where congestion
window is initialized to one segment and unacknowledged segments are
retransmitted using the slow-start algorithm. The retransmission
timer is adjusted dynamically based on the measured round-trip times
[PA00].
It has been pointed out that the retransmission timer can expire
spuriously and cause unnecessary retransmissions when no segments
have been lost [LK00, GL02, LM03]. After a spurious retransmission
timeout the late acknowledgments of the original segments arrive at
the sender, usually triggering unnecessary retransmissions of whole
window of segments during the RTO recovery. Furthermore, after a
spurious retransmission timeout a conventional TCP sender increases
the congestion window on each late acknowledgment in slow start,
injecting a large number of data segments to the network within one
round-trip time, thus violating the packet conservation principle
[Jac88].
There are a number of potential reasons for spurious retransmission
timeouts. First, some mobile networking technologies involve sudden
delay spikes on transmission because of actions taken during a hand-
off. Second, arrival of competing traffic, possibly with higher
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priority, on a low-bandwidth link or some other change in available
bandwidth involves a sudden increase of round-trip time which may
trigger a spurious retransmission timeout. A persistently reliable
link layer can also cause a sudden delay when a data frame and
several retransmissions of it are lost for some reason. This document
does not distinguish the different causes of such a delay spike, but
discusses the spurious retransmission timeouts caused by a delay
spike in general.
This document describes the F-RTO detection algorithm. It is based on
the detection mechanism of the "Forward RTO-Recovery" (F-RTO)
algorithm [SKR03] that is used for detecting spurious retransmission
timeouts and thus avoiding unnecessary retransmissions following the
retransmission timeout. When the timeout is not spurious, the F-RTO
algorithm reverts back to the conventional RTO recovery algorithm and
therefore has similar behavior and performance. F-RTO does not
require any TCP options in its operation, and it can be implemented
by modifying only the TCP sender. This is different from alternative
algorithms (Eifel [LK00], [LM03] and DSACK-based algorithms [BA04])
that have been suggested for detecting unnecessary retransmissions.
The Eifel algorithm uses TCP timestamps [BBJ92] for detecting a
spurious timeout upon arrival of the first acknowledgment after the
retransmission. The DSACK-based algorithms require that the TCP
Selective Acknowledgment Option [MMFR96] with the DSACK extension
[FMMP00] is in use. With DSACK, the TCP receiver can report if it has
received a duplicate segment, making it possible for the sender to
detect afterwards whether it has retransmitted segments
unnecessarily. The F-RTO algorithm only attempts to detect and avoid
unnecessary retransmissions after an RTO. Eifel and DSACK can also be
used for detecting unnecessary retransmissions caused by other
events, for example packet reordering.
When an RTO expires, the F-RTO sender retransmits the first
unacknowledged segment as usual [APS99]. Deviating from the normal
operation after a timeout, it then tries to transmit new, previously
unsent data, for the first acknowledgment that arrives after the
timeout given that the acknowledgment advances the window. If the
second acknowledgment that arrives after the timeout also advances
the window, i.e., acknowledges data that was not retransmitted, the
F-RTO sender declares the timeout spurious and exits the RTO
recovery. However, if either of these two acknowledgments is a
duplicate ACK, there is no sufficient evidence of a spurious timeout;
therefore the F-RTO sender retransmits the unacknowledged segments in
slow start similarly to the traditional algorithm. With a SACK-
enhanced version of the F-RTO algorithm, spurious timeouts may be
detected even if duplicate ACKs arrive after an RTO retransmission.
The F-RTO algorithm can also be applied with the Stream Control
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Transmission Protocol (SCTP) [Ste00], because SCTP has similar
acknowledgment and packet retransmission concepts as TCP. For
convenience, this document mostly refers to TCP, but the algorithms
and other discussion are valid also with SCTP.
This document is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the basic
F-RTO algorithm. Section 3 outlines an optional enhancement to the F-
RTO algorithm that takes leverage on the TCP SACK option. Section 4
discusses the possible actions to be taken after detecting a spurious
RTO. Section 5 gives considerations on applying F-RTO with SCTP, and
Section 6 discusses the security considerations.
2. F-RTO Algorithm
A spurious timeout is a timeout that would not have had to occur if
the sender had waited longer for an acknowledgment to arrive [LM03].
F-RTO affects the TCP sender behavior only after a retransmission
timeout, otherwise the TCP behavior remains unmodified. When the RTO
expires the F-RTO algorithm monitors incoming acknowledgments and
declares a timeout spurious, if the TCP sender gets an acknowledgment
for a segment that was not retransmitted due to timeout. The actions
taken in response to a spurious timeout are not specified in this
document, but we discuss the different alternatives in Section 4.
This section first describes the algorithm and then discusses the
different steps of the algorithm in more detail.
Following the practice used with the Eifel Detection algorithm
[LM03], we use the "SpuriousRecovery" variable to indicate whether
the retransmission is declared spurious by the sender. This variable
can be used as an input for a corresponding response algorithm. With
F-RTO, the value of SpuriousRecovery can either be SPUR_TO,
indicating a spurious retransmission timeout; or FALSE, when the
timeout is not declared spurious, and the TCP sender should follow
the conventional RTO recovery algorithm.
2.1. The Algorithm
A TCP sender MAY implement the basic F-RTO algorithm, and if it
chooses to apply the algorithm, the following steps MUST be taken
after the retransmission timer expires. If the sender implements some
other loss recovery algorithm than Reno or NewReno [FHG04], F-RTO
algorithm SHOULD NOT be entered when earlier fast recovery is
underway.
1) When RTO expires, the TCP sender SHOULD retransmit the first
unacknowledged segment and set SpuriousRecovery to FALSE. Also,
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the TCP SHOULD store the highest sequence number transmitted so
far in variable "recover".
2) When the first acknowledgment after the RTO retransmission arrives
at the sender, the sender chooses the following actions depending
on whether the ACK advances the window or whether it is a
duplicate ACK.
a) If the acknowledgment is a duplicate ACK OR it acknowledges a
sequence number equal to the value of "recover" OR it does not
acknowledge all of the data that was retransmitted in step 1,
the TCP sender MUST revert to the conventional RTO recovery and
continue by retransmitting unacknowledged data in slow start.
The TCP sender MUST NOT enter step 3 of this algorithm, and the
SpuriousRecovery variable remains as FALSE.
b) Else, if the acknowledgment advances the window AND it is below
the value of "recover", the TCP sender SHOULD transmit up to
two new (previously unsent) segments and enter step 3 of this
algorithm. If the TCP sender does not have enough unsent data,
it SHOULD send only one segment. In addition, the TCP sender
MAY override the Nagle algorithm [Nag84] and immediately send a
segment if needed. Note that sending two segments in this step
is allowed by TCP congestion control requirements [APS99], but
F-RTO changes which segments are transmitted.
If the TCP sender does not have any new data to send, or the
advertised window limits the transmission, the recommended
action is to not enter step 3 of this algorithm but continue
with slow start retransmissions following the conventional RTO
recovery algorithm. However, alternative ways of handling the
window limited cases that could result in better performance
are discussed in Appendix C.
3) When the second acknowledgment after the RTO retransmission
arrives at the sender, the TCP sender either declares the timeout
spurious, or starts retransmitting the unacknowledged segments.
a) If the acknowledgment is a duplicate ACK, the TCP sender MUST
set congestion window to no more than 3 * MSS, and continue
with the slow start algorithm retransmitting unacknowledged
segments. Congestion window can be set to 3 * MSS, because two
round-trip times have elapsed since the RTO, and a conventional
TCP sender would have increased cwnd to 3 during the same time.
The sender leaves SpuriousRecovery set to FALSE.
b) If the acknowledgment advances the window, i.e. it acknowledges
data that was not retransmitted after the timeout, the TCP
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sender SHOULD declare the timeout spurious, set
SpuriousRecovery to SPUR_TO and set the value of "recover"
variable to SND.UNA, the oldest unacknowledged sequence number
[Pos81].
2.2. Discussion
The F-RTO sender takes cautious actions when it receives duplicate
acknowledgments after a retransmission timeout. Since duplicate ACKs
may indicate that segments have been lost, reliably detecting a
spurious timeout is difficult in the lack of additional information.
Therefore the safest alternative is to follow the conventional TCP
recovery in those cases.
If the first acknowledgment after the RTO retransmission covers the
"recover" point at algorithm step (2a), there is not enough evidence
that a non-retransmitted segment has arrived at the receiver after
the timeout. This is a common case when a fast retransmission is
lost and it has been retransmitted again after an RTO, while the rest
of the unacknowledged segments have successfully been delivered to
the TCP receiver before the retransmission timeout. Therefore the
timeout cannot be declared spurious in this case.
If the first acknowledgment after the RTO retransmission does not
acknowledge all of the data that was retransmitted in step 1, the TCP
sender reverts to the conventional RTO recovery. Otherwise, a
malicious receiver acknowledging partial segments could cause the
sender to declare the timeout spurious in a case where data was lost.
The TCP sender is allowed to send two new segments in algorithm
branch (2b), because the conventional TCP sender would transmit two
segments when the first new ACK arrives after the RTO retransmission.
If sending new data is not possible in algorithm branch (2b), or the
receiver window limits the transmission, the TCP sender has to send
something in order to prevent the TCP transfer from stalling. If no
segments were sent, the pipe between sender and receiver may run out
of segments, and no further acknowledgments would arrive. In this
case the recommendation is to revert to the conventional RTO recovery
with slow start retransmissions, but Appendix C discusses some
alternative solutions for window limited situations.
If the RTO is declared spurious, the TCP sender sets the value of the
"recover" variable to SND.UNA in order to allow fast retransmit
[FHG04]. The "recover" variable was proposed for avoiding unnecessary
multiple fast retransmits when RTO expires during fast recovery with
NewReno TCP. As the sender does not retransmit other segments but the
one that triggered timeout, the problem addressed by the RFC cannot
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occur. Therefore, if there are three duplicate ACKs arriving at the
sender after the timeout, they are likely to indicate a packet loss,
hence fast retransmit should be used to allow efficient recovery. If
there are not enough duplicate ACKs arriving at the sender after a
packet loss, the retransmission timer expires another time and the
sender enters step 1 of this algorithm.
When the timeout is declared spurious, the TCP sender cannot detect
whether the unnecessary RTO retransmission was lost. In principle the
loss of the RTO retransmission should be taken as a congestion
signal, and thus there is a small possibility that the F-RTO sender
violates the congestion control rules, if it chooses to fully revert
congestion control parameters after detecting a spurious timeout. The
Eifel detection algorithm has a similar property, while the DSACK
option can be used to detect whether the retransmitted segment was
successfully delivered to the receiver.
The F-RTO algorithm has a side-effect on the TCP round-trip time
measurement. Because the TCP sender can avoid most of the unnecessary
retransmissions after detecting a spurious timeout, the sender is
able to take round-trip time samples on the delayed segments. If the
regular RTO recovery was used without TCP timestamps, this would not
be possible due to the retransmission ambiguity. As a result, the RTO
is likely to have more accurate and larger values with F-RTO than
with the regular TCP after a spurious timeout that was triggered due
to delayed segments. We believe this is an advantage in the networks
that are prone to delay spikes.
It is possible that the F-RTO algorithm does not always avoid
unnecessary retransmissions after a spurious timeout. If packet
reordering or packet duplication occurs on the segment that triggered
the spurious timeout, the F-RTO algorithm may not detect the spurious
timeout due to incoming duplicate ACKs. Additionally, if a spurious
timeout occurs during fast recovery, the F-RTO algorithm often cannot
detect the spurious timeout, because the segments transmitted before
the fast recovery trigger duplicate ACKs. However, we consider these
cases relatively rare, and note that in cases where F-RTO fails to
detect the spurious timeout, it performs similarly to the regular RTO
recovery.
3. A SACK-enhanced version of the F-RTO algorithm
This section describes an alternative version of the F-RTO algorithm,
that makes use of TCP Selective Acknowledgment Option [MMFR96]. By
using the SACK option the TCP sender can detect spurious timeouts in
most of the cases when packet reordering or packet duplication is
present. The difference to the basic F-RTO algorithm is that the
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sender may declare timeout spurious even when duplicate ACKs follow
the RTO, if the SACK blocks acknowledge new data that was not
transmitted after the RTO retransmission.
Given that the TCP Selective Acknowledgment Option [MMFR96] is
enabled for a TCP connection, a TCP sender MAY implement the SACK-
enhanced F-RTO algorithm. If the sender applies the SACK-enhanced F-
RTO algorithm, it MUST follow the steps below. This algorithm SHOULD
NOT be applied, if the TCP sender is already in loss recovery when
retransmission timeout occurs. However, it should be possible to
apply the principle of F-RTO within certain limitations also when
retransmission timeout occurs during existing loss recovery. While
this is a topic of further research, Appendix B briefly discusses the
related issues.
1) When the RTO expires, the TCP sender SHOULD retransmit the first
unacknowledged segment and set SpuriousRecovery to FALSE. Variable
"recover" is set to indicate the highest segment transmitted so
far. Following the recommendation in SACK specification [MMFR96],
the SACK scoreboard SHOULD be reset.
2) Wait until the acknowledgment for the data retransmitted due to
the timeout arrives at the sender. If duplicate ACKs arrive before
the cumulative acknowledgment for retransmitted data, adjust the
scoreboard according to the incoming SACK information but stay in
step 2 waiting for the next new acknowledgment. If RTO expires
again, restart the algorithm.
a) if a cumulative ACK acknowledges a sequence number equal to
"recover", the TCP sender SHOULD revert to the conventional RTO
recovery and it MUST set congestion window to no more than 2 *
MSS. The sender MUST NOT enter step 3 of this algorithm.
b) else, if a cumulative ACK acknowledges a sequence number
smaller than "recover" but larger than SND.UNA, the TCP sender
SHOULD transmit up to two new (previously unsent) segments and
proceed to step 3. If the TCP sender is not able to transmit
any previously unsent data due to receiver window limitation or
because it does not have any new data to send, the recommended
action is to not enter step 3 of this algorithm but continue
with slow start retransmissions following the conventional RTO
recovery algorithm.
It is also possible to apply some of the alternatives for
handling window limited cases discussed in Appendix C. In this
case, the TCP sender should also follow the recommendations
concerning acknowledgments of retransmitted segments given in
Appendix B.
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3) The next acknowledgment arrives at the sender. Either duplicate
ACK or a new cumulative ACK advancing the window applies in this
step.
a) if the ACK acknowledges sequence number above "recover", either
in SACK blocks or as a cumulative ACK, the sender MUST set
congestion window to no more than 3 * MSS and proceed with the
conventional RTO recovery, retransmitting unacknowledged
segments. The sender SHOULD take this branch also when the
acknowledgment is a duplicate ACK and it does not acknowledge
any new previously unacknowledged data below "recover" in the
SACK blocks. The sender leaves SpuriousRecovery set to FALSE.
b) if the ACK does not acknowledge sequence numbers above
"recover" AND it acknowledges data that was not acknowledged
earlier either with cumulative acknowledgment or using SACK
blocks, the TCP sender SHOULD declare the timeout spurious and
set SpuriousRecovery to SPUR_TO. The retransmission timeout can
be declared spurious, because the segment acknowledged with
this ACK was transmitted before the timeout.
If there are unacknowledged holes between the received SACK blocks,
those segments SHOULD be retransmitted similarly to the conventional
SACK recovery algorithm [BAFW03]. If the algorithm exits with
SpuriousRecovery set to SPUR_TO, "recover" SHOULD be set to SND.UNA,
thus allowing fast recovery on incoming duplicate acknowledgments.
4. Taking Actions after Detecting Spurious RTO
Upon retransmission timeout, a conventional TCP sender assumes that
outstanding segments are lost and starts retransmitting the
unacknowledged segments. When the retransmission timeout is detected
to be spurious, the TCP sender should not continue retransmitting
based on the timeout. For example, if the sender was in congestion
avoidance phase transmitting new previously unsent segments, it
should continue transmitting previously unsent segments after
detecting spurious RTO. This document does not describe the response
to spurious timeout, but a response algorithm is described in another
IETF document [LG04].
Additionally, different response variants to spurious retransmission
timeout have been discussed in various research papers [SKR03, GL03,
Sar03] and Internet-Drafts [SL03]. The different response
alternatives vary in whether the spurious retransmission timeout
should be taken as a congestion signal, thus causing the congestion
window or slow start threshold to be reduced at the sender, or
whether the congestion control state should be fully reverted to the
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state valid prior to the retransmission timeout.
5. SCTP Considerations
SCTP has similar retransmission algorithms and congestion control to
TCP. The SCTP T3-rtx timer for one destination address is maintained
in the same way than the TCP retransmission timer, and after a T3-rtx
expires, an SCTP sender retransmits unacknowledged data chunks in
slow start like TCP does. Therefore, SCTP is vulnerable to the nega-
tive effects of the spurious retransmission timeouts similarly to
TCP. Due to similar RTO recovery algorithms, F-RTO algorithm logic
can be applied also to SCTP. Since SCTP uses selective acknowledg-
ments, the SACK-based variant of the algorithm is recommended,
although the basic version can also be applied to SCTP. However, SCTP
contains features that are not present with TCP that need to be dis-
cussed when applying the F-RTO algorithm.
SCTP association can be multi-homed. The current retransmission pol-
icy states that retransmissions should go to alternative addresses.
If the retransmission was due to spurious timeout caused by a delay
spike, it is possible that the acknowledgment for the retransmission
arrives back at the sender before the acknowledgments of the original
transmissions arrive. If this happens, a possible loss of the origi-
nal transmission of the data chunk that was retransmitted due to the
spurious timeout may remain undetected when applying the F-RTO algo-
rithm. Because the timeout was caused by a delay spike, and it was
spurious in that respect, a suitable response is to continue by send-
ing new data. However, if the original transmission was lost, fully
reverting the congestion control parameters is too aggressive. There-
fore, taking conservative actions on congestion control is recom-
mended, if the SCTP association is multi-homed and retransmissions go
to alternative address. The information in duplicate TSNs can be then
used for reverting congestion control, if desired [BA04].
Note that the forward transmissions made in F-RTO algorithm step (2b)
should be destined to the primary address, since they are not
retransmissions.
When making a retransmission, a SCTP sender can bundle a number of
unacknowledged data chunks and include them in the same packet. This
needs to be considered when implementing F-RTO for SCTP. The basic
principle of F-RTO still holds: in order to declare the timeout spu-
rious, the sender must get an acknowledgment for a data chunk that
was not retransmitted after the retransmission timeout. In other
words, acknowledgments of data chunks that were bundled in RTO
retransmission must not be used for declaring the timeout spurious.
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6. Security Considerations
The main security threat regarding F-RTO is the possibility of a
receiver misleading the sender to set too large a congestion window
after an RTO. There are two possible ways a malicious receiver could
trigger a wrong output from the F-RTO algorithm. First, the receiver
can acknowledge data that it has not received. Second, it can delay
acknowledgment of a segment it has received earlier, and acknowledge
the segment after the TCP sender has been deluded to enter algorithm
step 3.
If the receiver acknowledges a segment it has not really received,
the sender can be lead to declare spurious timeout in F-RTO algorithm
step 3. However, since this causes the sender to have incorrect
state, it cannot retransmit the segment that has never reached the
receiver. Therefore, this attack is unlikely to be useful for the
receiver to maliciously gain a larger congestion window.
A common case for a retransmission timeout is that a fast retransmis-
sion of a segment is lost. If all other segments have been received,
the RTO retransmission causes the whole window to be acknowledged at
once. This case is recognized in F-RTO algorithm branch (2a). How-
ever, if the receiver only acknowledges one segment after receiving
the RTO retransmission, and then the rest of the segments, it could
cause the timeout to be declared spurious when it is not. Therefore,
it is suggested that when an RTO expires during fast recovery phase,
the sender would not fully revert the congestion window even if the
timeout was declared spurious, but reduce the congestion window to 1.
However, the sender can take actions to avoid unnecessary retransmis-
sions normally. If a TCP sender implements a burst avoidance algo-
rithm that limits the sending rate to be no higher than in slow
start, this precaution is not needed, and the sender may apply F-RTO
normally.
If there are more than one segments missing at the time when a
retransmission timeout occurs, the receiver does not benefit from
misleading the sender to declare a spurious timeout, because the
sender would then have to go through another recovery period to
retransmit the missing segments, usually after an RTO has elapsed.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Reiner Ludwig, Andrei Gurtov, Josh Blanton, Mark
Allman, Sally Floyd, Yogesh Swami, Mika Liljeberg, Ivan Arias
Rodriguez, Sourabh Ladha, Martin Duke, Motoharu Miyake, Ted Faber,
and Samu Kontinen for the discussion and feedback contributed to this
text.
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Normative References
[APS99] M. Allman, V. Paxson, and W. Stevens. TCP Congestion Con-
trol. RFC 2581, April 1999.
[BAFW03] E. Blanton, M. Allman, K. Fall, and L. Wang. A Conservative
Selective Acknowledgment (SACK)-based Loss Recovery Algo-
rithm for TCP. RFC 3517, April 2003.
[FHG04] S. Floyd, T. Henderson, and A. Gurtov. The NewReno Modifi-
cation to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm. RFC 3782, April
2004.
[MMFR96] M. Mathis, J. Mahdavi, S. Floyd, and A. Romanow. TCP Selec-
tive Acknowledgment Options. RFC 2018, October 1996.
[PA00] V. Paxson and M. Allman. Computing TCP's Retransmission
Timer. RFC 2988, November 2000.
[Pos81] J. Postel. Transmission Control Protocol. RFC 793, Septem-
ber 1981.
[Ste00] R. Stewart, et. al. Stream Control Transmission Protocol.
RFC 2960, October 2000.
Informative References
[ABF01] M. Allman, H. Balakrishnan, and S. Floyd. Enhancing TCP's
Loss Recovery Using Limited Transmit. RFC 3042, January
2001.
[BA04] E. Blanton and M. Allman. Using TCP Duplicate Selective
Acknowledgment (DSACKs) and Stream Control Transmission
Protocol (SCTP) Duplicate Transmission Sequence Numbers
(TSNs) to Detect Spurious Retransmissions. RFC 3708, Febru-
ary 2004.
[BBJ92] D. Borman, R. Braden, and V. Jacobson. TCP Extensions for
High Performance. RFC 1323, May 1992.
[FMMP00] S. Floyd, J. Mahdavi, M. Mathis, and M. Podolsky. An Exten-
sion to the Selective Acknowledgment (SACK) Option to TCP.
RFC 2883, July 2000.
[GL02] A. Gurtov and R. Ludwig. Evaluating the Eifel Algorithm for
TCP in a GPRS Network. In Proc. of European Wireless, Flo-
rence, Italy, February 2002
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[GL03] A. Gurtov and R. Ludwig, Responding to Spurious Timeouts in
TCP. In Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 03, San Francisco, CA,
USA, March 2003.
[Jac88] V. Jacobson. Congestion Avoidance and Control. In Proceed-
ings of ACM SIGCOMM 88.
[LG04] R. Ludwig and A. Gurtov. The Eifel Response Algorithm for
TCP. Internet draft "draft-ietf-tsvwg-tcp-eifel-
response-05.txt". March 2004. Work in progress.
[LK00] R. Ludwig and R.H. Katz. The Eifel Algorithm: Making TCP
Robust Against Spurious Retransmissions. ACM SIGCOMM Com-
puter Communication Review, 30(1), January 2000.
[LM03] R. Ludwig and M. Meyer. The Eifel Detection Algorithm for
TCP. RFC 3522, April 2003.
[Nag84] J. Nagle. Congestion Control in IP/TCP Internetworks. RFC
896, January 1984.
[SKR03] P. Sarolahti, M. Kojo, and K. Raatikainen. F-RTO: An
Enhanced Recovery Algorithm for TCP Retransmission Time-
outs. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, 33(2),
April 2003.
[Sar03] P. Sarolahti. Congestion Control on Spurious TCP Retrans-
mission Timeouts. In Proceedings of IEEE Globecom 2003, San
Francisco, CA, USA. December 2003.
[SL03] Y. Swami and K. Le. DCLOR: De-correlated Loss Recovery
using SACK option for spurious timeouts. Internet draft
"draft-swami-tsvwg-tcp-dclor-02.txt". September 2003. Work
in progress.
Appendix A: Scenarios
This section discusses different scenarios where RTOs occur and how
the basic F-RTO algorithm performs in those scenarios. The
interesting scenarios are a sudden delay triggering retransmission
timeout, loss of a retransmitted packet during fast recovery, link
outage causing the loss of several packets, and packet reordering. A
performance evaluation with a more thorough analysis on a real
implementation of F-RTO is given in [SKR03].
A.1. Sudden delay
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The main motivation of F-RTO algorithm is to improve TCP performance
when a delay spike triggers a spurious retransmission timeout. The
example below illustrates the segments and acknowledgments
transmitted by the TCP end hosts when a spurious timeout occurs, but
no packets are lost. For simplicity, delayed acknowledgments are not
used in the example. The example below applies the Eifel Response
Algorithm [LG04] after detecting a spurious timeout.
...
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
1. <---------------------------- ACK 5
2. SEND 10 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
3. <---------------------------- ACK 6
4. SEND 11 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
5. |
[delay]
|
[RTO]
[F-RTO step (1)]
6. SEND 6 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 6)
<earlier xmitted SEG 6> --->
7. <---------------------------- ACK 7
[F-RTO step (2b)]
8. SEND 12 ---------------------------->
9. SEND 13 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 7)
<earlier xmitted SEG 7> --->
10. <---------------------------- ACK 8
[F-RTO step (3b)]
[SpuriousRecovery <- SPUR_TO]
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 6, FlightSize = 6)
11. SEND 14 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 6, FlightSize = 7)
12. <---------------------------- ACK 9
13. SEND 15 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 6, FlightSize = 7)
14. <---------------------------- ACK 10
15. SEND 16 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 6, FlightSize = 7)
...
When a sudden delay long enough to trigger timeout occurs at step 5,
the TCP sender retransmits the first unacknowledged segment (step 6).
The next ACK covers the RTO retransmission because originally
transmitted segment 6 arrives at the receiver, and the TCP sender
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continues by sending two new data segments (steps 8, 9). Note that on
F-RTO steps (1) and (2b) congestion window and FlightSize are not yet
reset, because in case of possible spurious timeout the segments sent
before the timeout are still in the network. However, the sender
should still be equally aggressive to conventional TCP. Because the
second acknowledgment arriving after the RTO retransmission
acknowledges data that was not retransmitted due to timeout (step
10), the TCP sender declares the timeout as spurious and continues by
sending new data on next acknowledgments. Also the congestion control
state is reversed, as required by the Eifel Response Algorithm.
A.2. Loss of a retransmission
If a retransmitted segment is lost, the only way to retransmit it
again is to wait for the timeout to trigger the retransmission. Once
the segment is successfully received, the receiver usually
acknowledges several segments at once, because other segments in the
same window have been successfully delivered before the
retransmission arrives at the receiver. The example below shows a
scenario where retransmission (of segment 6) is lost, as well as a
later segment (segment 9) in the same window. The limited transmit
[ABF01] or SACK TCP [MMFR96] enhancements are not in use in this
example.
...
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
<segment 6 lost>
<segment 9 lost>
1. <---------------------------- ACK 5
2. SEND 10 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
3. <---------------------------- ACK 6
4. SEND 11 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
5. <---------------------------- ACK 6
6. <---------------------------- ACK 6
7. <---------------------------- ACK 6
8. SEND 6 --------------X
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 6)
<segment 6 lost>
9. <---------------------------- ACK 6
10. SEND 12 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 7)
11. <---------------------------- ACK 6
12. SEND 13 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 8, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 8)
[RTO]
13. SEND 6 ---------------------------->
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(cwnd = 8, ssthresh = 2, FlightSize = 8)
14. <---------------------------- ACK 9
[F-RTO step (2b)]
15. SEND 14 ---------------------------->
16. SEND 15 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 2, FlightSize = 7)
17. <---------------------------- ACK 9
[F-RTO step (3a)]
[SpuriousRecovery <- FALSE]
(cwnd = 3, ssthresh = 2, FlightSize = 7)
18. SEND 9 ---------------------------->
19. SEND 10 ---------------------------->
20. SEND 11 ---------------------------->
...
In the example above, segment 6 is lost and the sender retransmits it
after three duplicate ACKs in step 8. However, the retransmission is
also lost, and the sender has to wait for the RTO to expire before
retransmitting it again. Because the first ACK following the RTO
retransmission acknowledges the RTO retransmission (step 14), the
sender transmits two new segments. The second ACK in step 17 does not
acknowledge any previously unacknowledged data. Therefore the F-RTO
sender enters the slow start and sets cwnd to 3 * MSS. Congestion
window can be set to three segments, because two round-trips have
elapsed after the retransmission timeout. After this the receiver
acknowledges all segments transmitted prior to entering recovery and
the sender can continue transmitting new data in congestion
avoidance.
A.3. Link outage
The example below illustrates the F-RTO behavior when 4 consecutive
packets are lost in the network causing the TCP sender to fall back
to RTO recovery. Limited transmit and SACK are not used in this
example.
...
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
<segments 6-9 lost>
1. <---------------------------- ACK 5
2. SEND 10 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
3. <---------------------------- ACK 6
4. SEND 11 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
5. <---------------------------- ACK 6
|
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|
[RTO]
6. SEND 6 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 6)
7. <---------------------------- ACK 7
[F-RTO step (2b)]
8. SEND 12 ---------------------------->
9. SEND 13 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 7)
10. <---------------------------- ACK 7
[F-RTO step (3a)]
[SpuriousRecovery <- FALSE]
(cwnd = 3, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 7)
11. SEND 7 ---------------------------->
12. SEND 8 ---------------------------->
13. SEND 9 ---------------------------->
Again, F-RTO sender transmits two new segments (steps 8 and 9) after
the RTO retransmission is acknowledged. Because the next ACK does not
acknowledge any data that was not retransmitted after the
retransmission timeout (step 10), the F-RTO sender proceeds with
conventional recovery and slow start retransmissions.
A.4. Packet reordering
Since F-RTO modifies the TCP sender behavior only after a
retransmission timeout and it is intended to avoid unnecessary
retransmits only after spurious timeout, we limit the discussion on
the effects of packet reordering in F-RTO behavior to the cases where
packet reordering occurs immediately after the retransmission
timeout. When the TCP receiver gets an out-of-order segment, it
generates a duplicate ACK. If the TCP sender implements the basic F-
RTO algorithm, this may prevent the sender from detecting a spurious
timeout.
However, if the TCP sender applies the SACK-enhanced F-RTO, it is
possible to detect a spurious timeout also when packet reordering
occurs. We illustrate the behavior of SACK-enhanced F-RTO below when
segment 8 arrives before segments 6 and 7, and segments starting from
segment 6 are delayed in the network. In this example the TCP sender
reduces the congestion window and slow start threshold in response to
spurious timeout.
...
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
1. <---------------------------- ACK 5
2. SEND 10 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh < 6, FlightSize = 6)
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3. <---------------------------- ACK 6
4. SEND 11 ---------------------------->
5. |
[delay]
|
[RTO]
6. SEND 6 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 6, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 6)
<earlier xmitted SEG 8> --->
7. <---------------------------- ACK 6
[SACK 8]
[SACK F-RTO stays in step 2]
8. <earlier xmitted SEG 6> --->
9. <---------------------------- ACK 7
[SACK 8]
[SACK F-RTO step (2b)]
10. SEND 12 ---------------------------->
11. SEND 13 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 3, FlightSize = 7)
12. <earlier xmitted SEG 7> --->
13. <---------------------------- ACK 9
[SACK F-RTO step (3b)]
[SpuriousRecovery <- SPUR_TO]
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 6, FlightSize = 6)
14. SEND 14 ---------------------------->
(cwnd = 7, ssthresh = 6, FlightSize = 7)
15. <---------------------------- ACK 10
16. SEND 15 ---------------------------->
...
After RTO expires and the sender retransmits segment 6 (step 6), the
receiver gets segment 8 and generates duplicate ACK with SACK for
segment 8. In response to the acknowledgment the TCP sender does not
send anything but stays in F-RTO step 2. Because the next
acknowledgment advances the cumulative ACK point (step 9), the sender
can transmit two new segments according to SACK-enhanced F-RTO. The
next segment acknowledges new data between 7 and 11 that was not
acknowledged earlier (segment 7), so the F-RTO sender declares the
timeout spurious.
Appendix B: Applying SACK-enhanced F-RTO when RTO occurs during loss
recovery
We believe that slightly modified SACK-enhanced F-RTO algorithm can
be used to detect spurious timeouts also when RTO expires while an
earlier loss recovery is underway. However, there are issues that
need to be considered if F-RTO is applied in this case.
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The original SACK-based F-RTO requires in algorithm step 3 that an
ACK acknowledges previously unacknowledged non-retransmitted data
between SND.UNA and send_high. If RTO expires during earlier (SACK-
based) loss recovery, the F-RTO sender must only use acknowledgments
for non-retransmitted segments transmitted before the SACK-based loss
recovery started. This means that in order to declare timeout
spurious the TCP sender must receive an acknowledgment for non-
retransmitted segment between SND.UNA and RecoveryPoint in algorithm
step 3. RecoveryPoint is defined in conservative SACK-recovery
algorithm [BAFW03], and it is set to indicate the highest segment
transmitted so far when SACK-based loss recovery begins. In other
words, if the TCP sender receives acknowledgment for segment that was
transmitted more than one RTO ago, it can declare the timeout
spurious. Defining an efficient algorithm for checking these
conditions remains as a future work item.
When spurious timeout is detected according to the rules given above,
it may be possible that the response algorithm needs to consider this
case separately, for example in terms of what segments to retransmit
after RTO expires, and whether it is safe to revert the congestion
control parameters in this case. This is considered as a topic of
future research.
Appendix C: Discussion on Window Limited Cases
When the advertised window limits the transmission of two new
previously unsent segments, or there are no new data to sent, it was
recommended in F-RTO algorithm step (2b) that the TCP sender would
continue with conventional RTO recovery algorithm. The disadvantage
of doing this is that the sender may continue unnecessary
retransmissions due to possible spurious timeout. This section
briefly discusses the options that can potentially result in better
performance when transmitting previously unsent data is not possible.
- The TCP sender could reserve an unused space of a size of one or
two segments in the advertised window to ensure the use of
algorithms such as F-RTO or Limited Transmit [ABF01] in window
limited situations. On the other hand, while doing this, the TCP
sender should ensure that the window of outstanding segments is
large enough to have a proper utilization of the available pipe.
- Use additional information if available, e.g. TCP timestamps with
the Eifel Detection algorithm, for detecting a spurious timeout.
However, Eifel detection may yield different results from F-RTO
when ACK losses and a RTO occur within the same round-trip time
[SKR03].
- Retransmit data from the tail of the retransmission queue and
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continue with step 3 of the F-RTO algorithm. It is possible that
the retransmission is unnecessarily made, hence this option is not
encouraged, except for hosts that are known to operate in an
environment that is highly likely to have spurious timeouts. On the
other hand, with this method it is possible to avoid several
unnecessary retransmissions due to spurious timeout by doing only
one retransmission that may be unnecessary.
- Send a zero-sized segment below SND.UNA similar to TCP Keep-Alive
probe and continue with step 3 of the F-RTO algorithm. Since the
receiver replies with a duplicate ACK, the sender is able to detect
from the incoming acknowledgment whether the timeout was spurious.
While this method does not send data unnecessarily, it delays the
recovery by one round-trip time in cases where the timeout was not
spurious, and therefore is not encouraged.
- In receiver-limited cases, send one octet of new data regardless of
the advertised window limit, and continue with step 3 of the F-RTO
algorithm. It is possible that the receiver has free buffer space
to receive the data by the time the segment has propagated through
the network, in which case no harm is done. If the receiver is not
capable of receiving the segment, it rejects the segment and sends
a duplicate ACK.
Authors' Addresses
Pasi Sarolahti
Nokia Research Center
P.O. Box 407
FIN-00045 NOKIA GROUP
Finland
Phone: +358 50 4876607
EMail: pasi.sarolahti@nokia.com
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/sarolaht/
Markku Kojo
University of Helsinki
Department of Computer Science
P.O. Box 26
FIN-00014 UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI
Finland
Phone: +358 9 1914 4179
EMail: markku.kojo@cs.helsinki.fi
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