Complementing Current Active Queue Management Schemes with Receiver- Window Modification (RWM)

Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) and Active Queue Management Schemes such as Random Early Detection (RED), Adaptive Random Early Detection (ARED) and BLUE queues have been proposed for TCP/IP networks to compensate network congestion. However, using ECN requires that ECN be supported by both TCP senders and receivers. This paper presents a novel AQM modification called Receiver-Window Modification (RWM). RWM can be used together with RED, ARED and BLUE queues, to provide congestion avoidance in packet switched networks, especially at ingress and gateway routers. RWM does not require modification to all end system TCP/IP stacks but can be solely implemented in routers. Our RWM scheme helps in reducing the average queue sizes of RED, ARED and even ARED-ECN and RED-ECN queues. By reducing the average queue sizes, RWM queues reduce the queuing delay resulting in significant improvements in one-way end-to-end packet delays and dropped packets. It is also shown that the performance of RED-ECN, ARED-ECN and BLUE-ECN queues is heavily dependent on the queues of the downstream routers. RWM modified queues in ingress or gateway routers are not influenced by the number and state of the downstream router as they will piggyback congestion information to the source in the next available acknowledgement packet. We carry out extensive ns2 simulations to show our results and to support our claims.