Understanding CHOKe: throughput and spatial characteristics

A recently proposed active queue management, CHOKe, is stateless, simple to implement, yet surprisingly effective in protecting TCP from UDP flows. We present an equilibrium model of TCP/CHOKe. We prove that, provided the number of TCP flows is large, the UDP bandwidth share peaks at (e+1)/sup -1/=0.269 when UDP input rate is slightly larger than link capacity, and drops to zero as UDP input rate tends to infinity. We clarify the spatial characteristics of the leaky buffer under CHOKe that produce this throughput behavior. Specifically, we prove that, as UDP input rate increases, even though the total number of UDP packets in the queue increases, their spatial distribution becomes more and more concentrated near the tail of the queue, and drops rapidly to zero toward the head of the queue. In stark contrast to a nonleaky FIFO buffer where UDP bandwidth shares would approach 1 as its input rate increases without bound, under CHOKe, UDP simultaneously maintains a large number of packets in the queue and receives a vanishingly small bandwidth share, the mechanism through which CHOKe protects TCP flows

Point queue models: a unified approach

In transportation and other types of facilities, various queues arise when the demands of service are higher than the supplies, and many point and fluid queue models have been proposed to study such queueing systems. However, there has been no unified approach to deriving such models, analyzing their relationships and properties, and extending them for networks. In this paper, we derive point queue models as limits of two link-based queueing model: the link transmission model and a link queue model. With two definitions for demand and supply of a point queue, we present four point queue models, four approximate models, and their discrete versions. We discuss the properties of these models, including equivalence, well-definedness, smoothness, and queue spillback, both analytically and with numerical examples. We then analytically solve Vickrey's point queue model and stationary states in various models. We demonstrate that all existing point and fluid queue models in the literature are special cases of those derived from the link-based queueing models. Such a unified approach leads to systematic methods for studying the queueing process at a point facility and will also be helpful for studies on stochastic queues as well as networks of queues.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure

Performance Modelling and Optimisation of Multi-hop Networks

A major challenge in the design of large-scale networks is to predict and optimise the total time and energy consumption required to deliver a packet from a source node to a destination node. Examples of such complex networks include wireless ad hoc and sensor networks which need to deal with the effects of node mobility, routing inaccuracies, higher packet loss rates, limited or time-varying effective bandwidth, energy constraints, and the computational limitations of the nodes. They also include more reliable communication environments, such as wired networks, that are susceptible to random failures, security threats and malicious behaviours which compromise their quality of service (QoS) guarantees. In such networks, packets traverse a number of hops that cannot be determined in advance and encounter non-homogeneous network conditions that have been largely ignored in the literature. This thesis examines analytical properties of packet travel in large networks and investigates the implications of some packet coding techniques on both QoS and resource utilisation. Specifically, we use a mixed jump and diffusion model to represent packet traversal through large networks. The model accounts for network non-homogeneity regarding routing and the loss rate that a packet experiences as it passes successive segments of a source to destination route. A mixed analytical-numerical method is developed to compute the average packet travel time and the energy it consumes. The model is able to capture the effects of increased loss rate in areas remote from the source and destination, variable rate of advancement towards destination over the route, as well as of defending against malicious packets within a certain distance from the destination. We then consider sending multiple coded packets that follow independent paths to the destination node so as to mitigate the effects of losses and routing inaccuracies. We study a homogeneous medium and obtain the time-dependent properties of the packet’s travel process, allowing us to compare the merits and limitations of coding, both in terms of delivery times and energy efficiency. Finally, we propose models that can assist in the analysis and optimisation of the performance of inter-flow network coding (NC). We analyse two queueing models for a router that carries out NC, in addition to its standard packet routing function. The approach is extended to the study of multiple hops, which leads to an optimisation problem that characterises the optimal time that packets should be held back in a router, waiting for coding opportunities to arise, so that the total packet end-to-end delay is minimised

A Survey on Delay-Aware Resource Control for Wireless Systems --- Large Deviation Theory, Stochastic Lyapunov Drift and Distributed Stochastic Learning

In this tutorial paper, a comprehensive survey is given on several major systematic approaches in dealing with delay-aware control problems, namely the equivalent rate constraint approach, the Lyapunov stability drift approach and the approximate Markov Decision Process (MDP) approach using stochastic learning. These approaches essentially embrace most of the existing literature regarding delay-aware resource control in wireless systems. They have their relative pros and cons in terms of performance, complexity and implementation issues. For each of the approaches, the problem setup, the general solution and the design methodology are discussed. Applications of these approaches to delay-aware resource allocation are illustrated with examples in single-hop wireless networks. Furthermore, recent results regarding delay-aware multi-hop routing designs in general multi-hop networks are elaborated. Finally, the delay performance of the various approaches are compared through simulations using an example of the uplink OFDMA systems.Comment: 58 pages, 8 figures; IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 201

Cross-layer Congestion Control, Routing and Scheduling Design in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks

This paper considers jointly optimal design of crosslayer congestion control, routing and scheduling for ad hoc wireless networks. We first formulate the rate constraint and scheduling constraint using multicommodity flow variables, and formulate resource allocation in networks with fixed wireless channels (or single-rate wireless devices that can mask channel variations) as a utility maximization problem with these constraints. By dual decomposition, the resource allocation problem naturally decomposes into three subproblems: congestion control, routing and scheduling that interact through congestion price. The global convergence property of this algorithm is proved. We next extend the dual algorithm to handle networks with timevarying channels and adaptive multi-rate devices. The stability of the resulting system is established, and its performance is characterized with respect to an ideal reference system which has the best feasible rate region at link layer. We then generalize the aforementioned results to a general model of queueing network served by a set of interdependent parallel servers with time-varying service capabilities, which models many design problems in communication networks. We show that for a general convex optimization problem where a subset of variables lie in a polytope and the rest in a convex set, the dual-based algorithm remains stable and optimal when the constraint set is modulated by an irreducible finite-state Markov chain. This paper thus presents a step toward a systematic way to carry out cross-layer design in the framework of “layering as optimization decomposition” for time-varying channel models