Internet Engineering Task Force                              Mark Allman
INTERNET DRAFT                                              BBN/NASA GRC
File: draft-ietf-tsvwg-initwin-02.txt                        March, 2002
                                                Expires: September, 2002
                                                             Sally Floyd
                                                                    ICIR
                                                         Craig Partridge
                                                        BBN Technologies


                    Increasing TCP's Initial Window

Status of this Memo

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

    Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
    Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups.  Note that
    other groups may also distribute working documents as
    Internet-Drafts.

    Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
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    at any time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as
    reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

    The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
    http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt

    The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
    http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.

Abstract

    This document specifies an increase in the permitted initial window
    for TCP from one segment to roughly 4K bytes.  This document also
    discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the change, outlining
    experimental results that indicate the costs and benefits.

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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

1.  TCP Modification

    This document specifies an increase in the permitted upper bound for
    TCP's initial window from one segment to between two and four
    segments.  In most cases, this change results in an upper bound on
    the initial window of roughly 4K bytes (although given a large
    segment size, the permitted initial window of two segments may be
    significantly larger than 4K bytes).  The upper bound for the
    initial window is given more precisely in (1):

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          min (4*MSS, max (2*MSS, 4380 bytes))                      (1)

    Equivalently, the upper bound for the initial window size is based
    on the maximum segment size (MSS), as follows:

        If (MSS <= 1095 bytes)
            then win <= 4 * MSS;
        If (1095 bytes < MSS < 2190 bytes)
            then win <= 4380;
        If (2190 bytes <= MSS)
            then win <= 2 * MSS;

    This increased initial window is optional: that a TCP MAY start with
    a larger initial window.  However, we expect that most
    general-purpose TCP implementations would choose to use the larger
    initial congestion window given in equation (1) above.

    This upper bound for the initial window size represents a change
    from RFC 2581 [RFC2581], which specified that the congestion window
    be initialized to one or two segments.

    This change applies to the initial window of the connection in the
    first round trip time (RTT) of data transmission following the TCP three-
    way handshake.  Neither the SYN/ACK nor its acknowledgment (ACK) in
    the three-way handshake should increase the initial window size
    above that outlined in equation (1).  If the SYN or SYN/ACK is lost,
    the initial window used by a sender after a correctly transmitted
    SYN MUST be one segment consisting of MSS bytes.

    TCP implementations use slow start in as many as three different
    ways: (1) to start a new connection (the initial window); (2) to
    restart transmission after a long idle period (the restart window);
    and (3) to restart transmission after a retransmit timeout (the loss
    window).  The change specified in this document affects the value of
    the initial window.  Optionally, a TCP MAY set the restart window to
    the minimum of the value used for the initial window and the current
    value of cwnd (in other words, using a larger value for the restart
    window should never increase the size of cwnd).  These changes do
    NOT change the loss window, which must remain 1 segment of MSS bytes
    (to permit the lowest possible window size in the case of severe
    congestion).

2.  Implementation Issues

    When larger initial windows are implemented along with Path MTU
    Discovery [RFC1191], and the MSS being used is found to be too large,
    the congestion window `cwnd' SHOULD be reduced to prevent large
    bursts of smaller segments.  Specifically, `cwnd' SHOULD be reduced
    by the ratio of the old segment size to the new segment size.

    When larger initial windows are implemented along with Path MTU
    Discovery [RFC1191], alternatives are to set the "Don't Fragment"
    (DF) bit in all segments in the initial window, or to set the "Don't

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    Fragment" (DF) bit in one of the segments.  It is an open question
    which of these two alternatives is best; we would hope that
    implementation experiences will shed light on this question.  In the
    first case of setting the DF bit in all segments, if the initial
    packets are too large, then all of the initial packets will be
    dropped in the network.  In the second case of setting the DF bit in
    only one segment, if the initial packets are too large, then all but
    one of the initial packets will be fragmented in the network.  When
    the second case is followed, setting the DF bit in the last segment
    in the initial window provides the least chance for needless
    retransmissions when the initial segment size is found to be too
    large, because it minimizes the chances of duplicate ACKs triggering
    a Fast Retransmit.  However, more attention needs to be paid to the
    interaction between larger initial windows and Path MTU Discovery.

    The larger initial window specified in this document is not intended
    as encouragement for web browsers to open multiple simultaneous
    TCP connections all with large initial windows.  When web browsers
    open simultaneous TCP connections to the same destination, this
    works against TCP's congestion control mechanisms [FF98], regardless
    of the size of the initial window.  Combining this behavior with
    larger initial windows further increases the unfairness to other
    traffic in the network.

3.  Advantages of Larger Initial Windows

    1.  When the initial window is one segment, a receiver employing
        delayed ACKs [RFC1122] is forced to wait for a timeout before
        generating an ACK.  With an initial window of at least two
        segments, the receiver will generate an ACK after the second
        data segment arrives.  This eliminates the wait on the timeout
        (often up to 200 msec, and possibly up to 500 msec [RFC1122]).

    2.  For connections transmitting only a small amount of data, a
        larger initial window reduces the transmission time (assuming at
        most moderate segment drop rates).  For many email (SMTP
        [Pos82]) and web page (HTTP [RFC1945, RFC2068]) transfers that
        are less than 4K bytes, the larger initial window would reduce
        the data transfer time to a single RTT.

    3.  For connections that will be able to use large congestion
        windows, this modification eliminates up to three RTTs and a
        delayed ACK timeout during the initial slow-start phase.  This
        will be of particular benefit for high-bandwidth large-
        propagation-delay TCP connections, such as those over satellite
        links.

4.  Disadvantages of Larger Initial Windows for the Individual
    Connection

    In high-congestion environments, particularly for routers that have
    a bias against bursty traffic (as in the typical Drop Tail router
    queues), a TCP connection can sometimes be better off starting with
    an initial window of one segment.  There are scenarios where a TCP

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    connection slow-starting from an initial window of one segment might
    not have segments dropped, while a TCP connection starting with an
    initial window of four segments might experience unnecessary
    retransmits due to the inability of the router to handle small
    bursts.  This could result in an unnecessary retransmit timeout.
    For a large-window connection that is able to recover without a
    retransmit timeout, this could result in an unnecessarily-early
    transition from the slow-start to the congestion-avoidance phase of
    the window increase algorithm.  These premature segment drops are
    unlikely to occur in uncongested networks with sufficient buffering
    or in moderately-congested networks where the congested router uses
    active queue management (such as Random Early Detection [FJ93,
    RFC2309]).

    Some TCP connections will receive better performance with the larger
    initial window even if the burstiness of the initial window results
    in premature segment drops.  This will be true if (1) the TCP
    connection recovers from the segment drop without a retransmit
    timeout, and (2) the TCP connection is ultimately limited to a small
    congestion window by either network congestion or by the receiver's
    advertised window.

5.  Disadvantages of Larger Initial Windows for the Network

    In terms of the potential for congestion collapse, we consider two
    separate potential dangers for the network.  The first danger would
    be a scenario where a large number of segments on congested links
    were duplicate segments that had already been received at the
    receiver.  The second danger would be a scenario where a large
    number of segments on congested links were segments that would be
    dropped later in the network before reaching their final
    destination.

    In terms of the negative effect on other traffic in the network, a
    potential disadvantage of larger initial windows would be that they
    increase the general packet drop rate in the network.  We discuss
    these three issues below.

    Duplicate segments:

        As described in the previous section, the larger initial window
        could occasionally result in a segment dropped from the initial
        window, when that segment might not have been dropped if the
        sender had slow-started from an initial window of one segment.
        However, Appendix A shows that even in this case, the larger
        initial window would not result in the transmission of a large
        number of duplicate segments.

    Segments dropped later in the network:

        How much would the larger initial window for TCP increase the
        number of segments on congested links that would be dropped
        before reaching their final destination?  This is a problem that
        can only occur for connections with multiple congested links,

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        where some segments might use scarce bandwidth on the first
        congested link along the path, only to be dropped later along
        the path.

        First, many of the TCP connections will have only one congested
        link along the path.  Segments dropped from these connections do
        not "waste" scarce bandwidth, and do not contribute to
        congestion collapse.

        However, some network paths will have multiple congested links,
        and segments dropped from the initial window could use scarce
        bandwidth along the earlier congested links before ultimately
        being dropped on subsequent congested links.  To the extent that
        the drop rate is independent of the initial window used by TCP
        segments, the problem of congested links carrying segments that
        will be dropped before reaching their destination will be
        similar for TCP connections that start by sending four segments
        or one segment.

    An increased packet drop rate:

        For a network with a high segment drop rate, increasing the TCP
        initial window could increase the segment drop rate even
        further.  This is in part because routers with Drop Tail queue
        management have difficulties with bursty traffic in times of
        congestion.  However, given uncorrelated arrivals for TCP
        connections, the larger TCP initial window should not
        significantly increase the segment drop rate.  Simulation-based
        explorations of these issues are discussed in Section 7.2.

    These potential dangers for the network are explored in simulations
    and experiments described in the section below.  Our judgment is that
    while there are dangers of congestion collapse in the current
    Internet (see [FF98] for a discussion of the dangers of congestion
    collapse from an increased deployment of UDP connections without
    end-to-end congestion control), there is no such danger to the
    network from increasing the TCP initial window to 4K bytes.

6.  Interactions with the Retransmission Timer

    Using a larger initial burst of data can exacerbate existing
    problems with spurious retransmit timeouts on low-bandwidth paths,
    assuming the standard algorithm for determining the TCP
    retransmission timeout (RTO) [RFC2988].  The problem is that across
    low-bandwidth network paths on which the transmission time of a
    packet is a large portion of the round-trip time, the small packets
    used to establish a TCP connection do not seed the RTO estimator appropriately.
    When the first window of data packets is transmitted, the sender's
    retransmit timer could expire before the acknowledgments for those
    packets are received.  As each acknowledgment arrives, the
    retransmit timer is generally reset.  Thus, the retransmit timer
    will not expire as long as an acknowledgment arrives at least once
    a second, given the one-second minimum on the RTO recommended in RFC
    2988.

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    For instance, consider a 9.6 Kbps link.  The initial RTT measurement
    will be on the order of 67 msec, if we simply consider the
    transmission time of 2 packets (the SYN and SYN-ACK) each consisting
    of 40 bytes.  Using the RTO estimator given in [RFC2988], this
    yields an initial RTO of 201 msec (67 + 4*(67/2)).  However, we
    round the RTO to 1 second as specified in RFC 2988.  Then assume we
    send an initial window of one or more 1500-byte packets (1460 data
    bytes plus overhead).  Each packet will take on the order of 1.25
    seconds to transmit.  Clearly the RTO will fire before the ACK for
    the first packet returns, causing a spurious timeout.  In this case,
    a larger initial window of three or four packets exacerbates the
    problems caused by this spurious timeout.

    One way to deal with this problem is to make the RTO algorithm more
    conservative.  During the initial window of data, for instance, we
    could update the RTO for each acknowledgment received.  In
    addition, if the retransmit timer expires for some packet lost in
    the first window of data, we could leave the exponential-backoff of
    the retransmit timer engaged until at least one valid RTT measurement is
    received that involves a data packet.

    Another method would be to refrain from taking a RTT sample during
    connection establishment, leaving the default RTO in place until TCP
    takes a sample from a data segment and the corresponding ACK.  While
    this method likely helps prevent spurious retransmits it also slows
    the data transfer down if loss occurs before the RTO is seeded.

    This specification leaves the decision about what to do (if
    anything) with regards to the RTO when using a larger initial window
    to the implementer.

7.  Typical Levels of Burstiness for TCP Traffic.

    Larger TCP initial windows would not dramatically increase the
    burstiness of TCP traffic in the Internet today, because such
    traffic is already fairly bursty.  Bursts of two and three segments
    are already typical of TCP [Flo97]; A delayed ACK (covering two
    previously unacknowledged segments) received during congestion
    avoidance causes the congestion window to slide and two segments to
    be sent.  The same delayed ACK received during slow start causes the
    window to slide by two segments and then be incremented by one
    segment, resulting in a three-segment burst.  While not necessarily
    typical, bursts of four and five segments for TCP are not rare.
    Assuming delayed ACKs, a single dropped ACK causes the subsequent
    ACK to cover four previously unacknowledged segments.  During
    congestion avoidance this leads to a four-segment burst and during
    slow start a five-segment burst is generated.

    There are also changes in progress that reduce the performance
    problems posed by moderate traffic bursts.  One such change is the
    deployment of higher-speed links in some parts of the network, where
    a burst of 4K bytes can represent a small quantity of data.  A
    second change, for routers with sufficient buffering, is the

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    deployment of queue management mechanisms such as RED, which is
    designed to be tolerant of transient traffic bursts.

8.  Simulations and Experimental Results

8.1 Studies of TCP Connections using that Larger Initial Window

    This section surveys simulations and experiments that have been used
    to explore the effect of larger initial windows on TCP
    connections.  The first set of experiments
    explores performance over satellite links.  Larger initial windows
    have been shown to improve performance of TCP connections over
    satellite channels [All97b].  In this study, an initial window of
    four segments (512 byte MSS) resulted in throughput improvements of
    up to 30% (depending upon transfer size).  [KAGT98] shows that the
    use of larger initial windows results in a decrease in transfer time
    in HTTP tests over the ACTS satellite system.  A study involving
    simulations of a large number of HTTP transactions over hybrid fiber
    coax (HFC) indicates that the use of larger initial windows
    decreases the time required to load WWW pages [Nic97].

    A second set of experiments has explored TCP performance over dialup
    modem links.  In experiments over a 28.8 bps dialup channel [All97a,
    AHO98], a four-segment initial window decreased the transfer time of
    a 16KB file by roughly 10%, with no accompanying increase in the
    drop rate.  A particular area of concern has been TCP performance
    over low speed tail circuits (e.g., dialup modem links) with routers
    with small buffers.  A simulation study [RFC2416] investigated the
    effects of using a larger initial window on a host connected by a
    slow modem link and a router with a 3 packet buffer.  The study
    concluded that for the scenario investigated, the use of larger
    initial windows was not harmful to TCP performance.  Questions have
    been raised concerning the effects of larger initial windows on the
    transfer time for short transfers in this environment, but these
    effects have not been quantified.  A question has also been raised
    concerning the possible effect on existing TCP connections sharing
    the link.

    Finally, [All00] illustrates that the percentage of connections at a
    particular web server that experience loss in the initial window of
    data transmission increases with the size of the initial congestion
    window.  However, the increase is in line with what would be
    expected from sending a larger burst into the network.

8.2 Studies of Networks using Larger Initial Windows

    This section surveys simulations and experiments investigating the
    impact of the larger window on other TCP connections sharing the
    path.  Experiments in [All97a, AHO98] show that for 16 KB transfers
    to 100 Internet hosts, four-segment initial windows resulted in a
    small increase in the drop rate of 0.04 segments/transfer.  While
    the drop rate increased slightly, the transfer time was reduced by
    roughly 25% for transfers using the four-segment (512 byte MSS)
    initial window when compared to an initial window of one segment.

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    One scenario of concern is heavily loaded links.  For instance,
    several years ago one of the trans-Atlantic links was so heavily
    loaded that the correct congestion window size for each connection was
    about one segment.  In this environment, new connections using
    larger initial windows would be starting with windows that were four
    times too big.  What would the effects be?  Do connections thrash?

    A simulation study in [RFC2415] explores the impact of a larger initial
    window on competing network traffic.  In this investigation, HTTP
    and FTP flows share a single congested gateway (where the number of
    HTTP and FTP flows varies from one simulation set to another).  For
    each simulation set, the paper examines aggregate link utilization
    and packet drop rates, median web page delay, and network power for
    the FTP transfers.  The larger initial window generally resulted in
    increased throughput, slightly-increased packet drop rates, and an
    increase in overall network power.  With the exception of one
    scenario, the larger initial window resulted in an increase in the
    drop rate of less than 1% above the loss rate experienced when using
    a one-segment initial window; in this scenario, the drop rate
    increased from 3.5% with one-segment initial windows, to 4.5% with
    four-segment initial windows.  The overall conclusions were that
    increasing the TCP initial window to three packets (or 4380 bytes)
    helps to improve perceived performance.

    Morris [Mor97] investigated larger initial windows in a very
    congested network with transfers of size 20K.  The loss rate in
    networks where all TCP connections use an initial window of four
    segments is shown to be 1-2% greater than in a network where all
    connections use an initial window of one segment.  This relationship
    held in scenarios where the loss rates with one-segment initial
    windows ranged from 1% to 11%.  In addition, in networks where
    connections used an initial window of four segments, TCP connections
    spent more time waiting for the retransmit timer (RTO) to expire to
    resend a segment than was spent when using an initial window of one
    segment.  The time spent waiting for the RTO timer to expire
    represents idle time when no useful work was being accomplished for
    that connection.  These results show that in a very congested
    environment, where each connection's share of the bottleneck
    bandwidth is close to one segment, using a larger initial window can
    cause a perceptible increase in both loss rates and retransmit
    timeouts.

9.  Security Considerations

    This document discusses the initial congestion window permitted for
    TCP connections.  Changing this value does not raise any known new
    security issues with TCP.

10. Conclusion

    This document specifies a small change to TCP that will likely be beneficial
    to short-lived TCP connections and those over links with long RTTs
    (saving several RTTs during the initial slow-start phase).

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11. Acknowledgments

    We would like to acknowledge Vern Paxson, Tim Shepard, members of
    the End-to-End-Interest Mailing List, and members of the IETF TCP
    Implementation Working Group for continuing discussions of these
    issues for discussions and feedback on this document.

12. References

    [AHO98] Mark Allman, Chris Hayes, and Shawn Ostermann, An Evaluation
        of TCP with Larger Initial Windows, March 1998.  Submitted to
        ACM Computer Communication Review.  URL:
        "http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~mallman/papers/initwin.ps".

    [All97a] Mark Allman.  An Evaluation of TCP with Larger Initial
        Windows.  40th IETF Meeting -- TCP Implementations WG.
        December, 1997.  Washington, DC.

    [All97b] Mark Allman.  Improving TCP Performance Over Satellite
        Channels.  Master's thesis, Ohio University, June 1997.

    [All00] Mark Allman. A Web Server's View of the Transport Layer. ACM
        Computer Communication Review, 30(5), October 2000.

    [FF96] Fall, K., and Floyd, S., Simulation-based Comparisons of
        Tahoe, Reno, and SACK TCP.  Computer Communication Review,
        26(3), July 1996.

    [FF98] Sally Floyd, Kevin Fall.  Promoting the Use of End-to-End
        Congestion Control in the Internet.  Submitted to IEEE
        Transactions on Networking.  URL "http://www-
        nrg.ee.lbl.gov/floyd/end2end-paper.html".

    [FJ93] Floyd, S., and Jacobson, V., Random Early Detection gateways
        for Congestion Avoidance. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking,
        V.1 N.4, August 1993, p. 397-413.

    [Flo94] Floyd, S., TCP and Explicit Congestion Notification.
        Computer Communication Review, 24(5):10-23, October 1994.

    [Flo96] Floyd, S., Issues of TCP with SACK. Technical report,
        January 1996.  Available from http://www-nrg.ee.lbl.gov/floyd/.

    [Flo97] Floyd, S., Increasing TCP's Initial Window.  Viewgraphs,
        40th IETF Meeting - TCP Implementations WG. December, 1997.  URL
        "ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/talks/sf-tcp-ietf97.ps".

    [KAGT98] Hans Kruse, Mark Allman, Jim Griner, Diepchi Tran.  HTTP
        Page Transfer Rates Over Geo-Stationary Satellite Links.  March
        1998.  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on
        Telecommunication Systems.  URL
        "http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~mallman/papers/nash98.ps".


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    [Mor97] Robert Morris.  Private communication, 1997.  Cited for
        acknowledgement purposes only.

    [Nic97] Kathleen Nichols.  Improving Network Simulation with
        Feedback.  Com21, Inc. Technical Report.  Available from
        http://www.com21.com/pages/papers/068.pdf.

    [Pos82] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", STD 10, RFC
        821, August 1982.

    [RFC1122] Braden, R., "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
        Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC 1122, October 1989.

    [RFC1191] Mogul, J., and S. Deering, "Path MTU Discovery", RFC 1191,
        November 1990.

    [RFC1945] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and H. Nielsen, "Hypertext
        Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, May 1996.

    [RFC2068] Fielding, R., Mogul, J., Gettys, J., Frystyk, H., and T.
        Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC
        2068, January 1997.

    [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
        Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

    [RFC2309] Braden, B., Clark, D., Crowcroft, J., Davie, B., Deering,
        S., Estrin, D., Floyd, S., Jacobson, V., Minshall, G.,
        Partridge, C., Peterson, L., Ramakrishnan, K., Shenker, S.,
        Wroclawski, J., and L.  Zhang, "Recommendations on Queue
        Management and Congestion Avoidance in the Internet", RFC 2309,
        April 1998.

    [RFC2415] Poduri, K., and K. Nichols, "Simulation Studies of
        Increased Initial TCP Window Size", RFC 2415, September 1998.

    [RFC2416] Shepard, T., and C. Partridge, "When TCP Starts Up With
        Four Packets Into Only Three Buffers", RFC 2416, September 1998.

    [RFC2581] Mark Allman, Vern Paxson, W. Richard Stevens. TCP
        Congestion Control, April 1999.  RFC 2581.

    [RFC2988] Vern Paxson, Mark Allman. Computing TCP's Retransmission
        Timer, November 2000.  RFC 2988.

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

    [RFC3168] Ramakrishnan, K.K., Floyd, S., and Black, D., "The
        Addition of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to IP", RFC
        3168, September 2001.

13. Author's Addresses


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    Mark Allman
    BBN Technologies/NASA Glenn Research Center
    21000 Brookpark Road
    MS 54-5
    Cleveland, OH 44135
    EMail: mallman@bbn.com
    http://roland.lerc.nasa.gov/~mallman/

    Sally Floyd
    ICSI Center for Internet Research
    1947 Center St, Suite 600
    Berkeley, CA 94704
    Phone: +1 (510) 666-2989
    EMail: floyd@icir.org
    http://www.icir.org/floyd/

    Craig Partridge
    BBN Technologies
    10 Moulton Street
    Cambridge, MA 02138

    EMail: craig@bbn.com

13.  Appendix - Duplicate Segments

    In the current environment (without Explicit Congestion Notification
    [Flo94] [RFC2481]), all TCPs use segment drops as indications from
    the network about the limits of available bandwidth.  We argue here
    that the change to a larger initial window should not result in the
    sender retransmitting a large number of duplicate segments that have
    already arrived at the receiver.

    If one segment is dropped from the initial window, there are three
    different ways for TCP to recover: (1) Slow-starting from a window
    of one segment, as is done after a retransmit timeout, or after Fast
    Retransmit in Tahoe TCP; (2) Fast Recovery without selective
    acknowledgments (SACK), as is done after three duplicate ACKs in
    Reno TCP; and (3) Fast Recovery with SACK, for TCP where both the
    sender and the receiver support the SACK option [MMFR96].  In all
    three cases, if a single segment is dropped from the initial window,
    no duplicate segments (i.e., segments that have already been
    received at the receiver) are transmitted.  Note that for a TCP
    sending four 512-byte segments in the initial window, a single
    segment drop will not require a retransmit timeout, but can be
    recovered from using the Fast Retransmit algorithm (unless the
    retransmit timer expires prematurely).  In addition, a single
    segment dropped from an initial window of three segments might be
    repaired using the fast retransmit algorithm, depending on which
    segment is dropped and whether or not delayed ACKs are used.  For
    example, dropping the first segment of a three segment initial
    window will always require waiting for a timeout, in the absence of
    Limited Transmit [RFC3042].  However, dropping the third segment
    will always allow recovery via the fast retransmit algorithm, as
    long as no ACKs are lost.

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draft-ietf-tsvwg-initwin-02.txt                               March 2002


    Next we consider scenarios where the initial window contains two to
    four segments, and at least two of those segments are dropped.  If
    all segments in the initial window are dropped, then clearly no
    duplicate segments are retransmitted, as the receiver has not yet
    received any segments.  (It is still a possibility that these
    dropped segments used scarce bandwidth on the way to their drop
    point; this issue was discussed in Section 5.)

    When two segments are dropped from an initial window of three
    segments, the sender will only send a duplicate segment if the first
    two of the three segments were dropped, and the sender does not
    receive a packet with the SACK option acknowledging the third
    segment.

    When two segments are dropped from an initial window of four
    segments, an examination of the six possible scenarios (which we
    don't go through here) shows that, depending on the position of the
    dropped packets, in the absence of SACK the sender might send one
    duplicate segment.  There are no scenarios in which the sender sends
    two duplicate segments.

    When three segments are dropped from an initial window of four
    segments, then, in the absence of SACK, it is possible that one
    duplicate segment will be sent, depending on the position of the
    dropped segments.

    The summary is that in the absence of SACK, there are some scenarios
    with multiple segment drops from the initial window where one
    duplicate segment will be transmitted.  There are no scenarios where
    more that one duplicate segment will be transmitted.  Our conclusion
    is that the number of duplicate segments transmitted as a result of
    a larger initial window should be small.






















Expires: September 2002                                        [Page 12]