LTCP: A Layering Technique for Improving the Performance of TCP in Highspeed Networks

Abstract. In this paper, we propose Layered TCP (LTCP for short), a simple layering technique for the congestion window response of TCP to make it more scalable in highspeed networks. LTCP uses two dimensional congestion control: at the macroscopic level, the layers are added/dropped based on dynamic network conditions and at the microscopic level, the congestion window behavior is defined for operating at any given layer. We provide the design, analysis and preliminary results based on ns-2 simulations. Our experiments show that LTCP has promising convergence properties, is about an order of magnitude faster than TCP in utilizing high bandwidth links and can be made to operate with smaller window fluctuations than normal TCP. LTCP employs few parameters and is easy to understand.