Less-than-Best-Effort capacity sharing over high BDP networks with LEDBAT

There has been a renewed interest at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in using Less-than-Best Effort (LBE) methods for background applications. IETF recently published a RFC for Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT), a congestion control algorithm for LBE transmissions. This paper provides an analysis of LEDBAT performance over congested large bandwidth X delay product (LBDP) networks, and assesses the validity of having a fixed target queuing time. In particular, we lead a study of the impact of this target queuing delay when LEDBAT is used over 4G satellite networks. The rationale is to explore the possibility to grab the unused 4G satellite links' capacity to carry non-commercial traffic. We show that this is achievable with LEDBAT. However, depending on the fluctuation of the load, performance improvements could be obtained by properly setting the target value. We generalize this evaluation over different congested LBDP networks and confirm that the target value might need to be adjusted to networks' and traffic's characteristics. Further work will study whether and how this parameter should be dynamically adapted, and LEDBAT's congestion control improved

FLOWER - Fuzzy lower than-best effort transport protocol

We present a new delay-based transport protocol named FLOWER, that aims at providing a Lower-than-Best-Effort (LBE) service. The objective is to propose an alternative to the Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) widely deployed within the official BitTorrent client. Indeed, besides its intra-fairness problem, known as latecomer unfairness, LEDBAT can be too aggressive against TCP, making it ill suited for providing LBE services over certain networks such as constrained wireless networks. By using a fuzzy controller to modulate the sending rate, FLOWER aims to solve LEDBAT issues while fulfilling the role of a LBE protocol. Our simulation results show that FLOWER can carry LBE traffic in network scenarios where LEDBAT cannot while solving the latecomer unfairness problem. Finally, the presented algorithm is simple to implement and does not require complex computation that would prevent its deployment

Security analysis of the micro transport protocol with a misbehaving receiver

BitTorrent is the most widely used Peer-to-Peer (P2P) protocol and it comprises the largest share of traffic in Europe. To make BitTorrent more Internet Service Provider (ISP) friendly, BitTorrent Inc. invented the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP). It is based on UDP with a novel congestion control called Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT). This protocol assumes that the receiver always gives correct feedback, since otherwise this deteriorates throughput or yields to corrupted data. We show through experimental investigation that a misbehaving uTP receiver, which is not interested in data integrity, can increase the bandwidth of the sender by up to five times. This can cause a congestion collapse and steal large share of a victim’s bandwidth. We present three attacks, which increase the bandwidth usage significantly. We have tested these attacks in a real world environment and show its severity both in terms of number of packets and total traffic generated. We also present a countermeasure for protecting against the attacks and evaluate the performance of that defence strategy

On The Existence Of Optimal LEDBAT Parameters

The Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT) protocol is a recently standardized protocol that aims to offer a scavenger service (i.e. the goal is to exploit the remaining and unused capacity of a link). LEDBAT is a delay-based protocol mainly defined by two parameters: a target queuing delay and a gain. The RFC 6817 provides guidelines to configure both parameters that strongly impact on the LEDBAT behavior in terms of fairness with other protocols. However, these guidelines are questioned by several studies as they might lead to the generation of a non-LBE (Less-than-Best-Effort) traffic. This paper explores the set of optimal parameters allowing LEDBAT protocol to effectively perform as an LBE traffic. We conclude that the optimal couple of target and decrease gain is (5ms; 10). However, we observe that the aggregated use of optimized LEDBAT sources still disturb the overall traffic performance and that the exponential backoff is not an answer to this issue. As a result, we believe that additional strategies to limit the number of LEDBAT flows are required for integrating this protocol at a large scale

An experimental evaluation of LEDBAT++

LEDBAT++ is the evolution of LEDBAT, a congestion control algorithm originally designed to provide lessthan- best-effort transport on the Internet. LEDBAT++ aims to address a number of shortcomings present in LEDBAT, including late-comer advantage, latency drift, competition on equal grounds with best effort traffic in the presence of small buffers and difficulties experienced while measuring the variations on the delay. In this paper, we perform an experimental evaluation of LEDBAT++ using the Windows Server’s LEDBAT++ implementation. We find that while LEDBAT++ overcomes all the limitations identified in LEDBAT, the change introduced in LEDBAT++ to do so results in a performance penalty that prevents LEDBAT++ flows to seize all the available capacity when there is no competing traffic. We propose two simple modifications to the LEDBAT++ algorithm that would address the identified issues and reduce the penalty.This work has been partially supported by the EU EC through the NGI Pointer RIM project, Grant 871528 , and the Madrid Government (Comunidad de Madrid-Spain) under the Multiannual Agreement with UC3M in the line of Excellence of University Professors (EPUC3M21), and in the context of the V PRICIT (Regional Programme of Research and Technological Innovation)