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Week 2 Synopsis

chennakeshava1998 edited this page Oct 10, 2018 · 20 revisions

Using ECN codepoints in SYN/ACK packets: [RFC 5562]

  • When the router detects congestion before buffer overflow, the router can provide a congestion indication either by dropping a packet or by setting the Congestion Experienced (CE) codepoint in the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) field in the IP header [RFC3168].

  • RFC 3168 [RFC3168] does not specify the use of ECN for the first SYN/ACK packet itself. However, because of the high cost to the TCP transfer of having a SYN/ACK packet dropped, with the resulting retransmission timeout, rfc5562 specifies the use of ECN for the SYN/ACK packet itself.

  • Initiator: The node which initiates the TCP connection establishment. Responder: The node which sends the SYN/ACK packet.

  • A TCP node may respond to an initial ECN-setup SYN packet by setting ECT in the responding ECN-setup SYN/ACK packet, indicating to routers that the SYN/ACK packet is ECN-Capable.

  • This allows a congested router along the path to mark the packet instead of dropping the packet as an indication of congestion.

  • If a SYN/ACK packet with the ECT codepoint is dropped, the responder should resend the SYN/ACK packet without the ECN-Capable codepoint. (responder uses a 3 second retransmission timer)

  • if the TCP responder is informed that the SYN/ACK was ECN-marked, the TCP responder immediately sends a SYN/ACK packet that is not ECN-Capable. The TCP responder is only allowed to send data packets after the TCP initiator reports the receipt of a SYN/ACK packet that is not ECN- marked.

Doubts:

  1. What are the reasons TCP packets can be dropped? Is it only congestion??
  2. Does ECN help with reducing the unfairness caused by packet drop with the previous congestion control mechanism?? How?
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