[e2e] Uodates on BIC-TCP

[Injong Rhee]

We are happy to update you about our progress with BIC, one of many TCP
variants designed for high-speed long-distance networks.
You can find more information about the updates from the official BIC web
site: http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/rhee/export/bitcp/index.htm

1   A new version of BIC (Version 1.1) is now available as Linux patch from
the BIC web site. This version improves on transmission burstiness in the
Linux TCP implementation and adds new features to increase its scalability.

2.  We have been working on a new variant of TCP, called CUBIC. It is an
enhancement to BIC; it is designed to improve the TCP-friendliness and
RTT-fairness of BIC. It also greatly simplifies window control by employing
a cubic window growth function. The details about CUBIC, its simulation and
experimental results can be found in our BIC web site.  You may glance
through our new white paper available on the site to get a feel for the
performance of CUBIC.

You may also find our NS simulation code, simulation setup script, and Linux
patch for CUBIC in the web site. (The script is not up yet, but will be up
within a couple of days.)

3.  BIC Version 1.0 is now bundled with the latest version of Linux 2.6.
When you download the latest Linux 2.6 tree from ftp.kernel.org
 you will find BIC.

It implements only the BIC congestion control algorithm -- it does not
implement some features of fast SACK processing functionality which is known
to reduce ACK processing overhead greatly.  So the performance may not be as
good as reported by others who are using our original BIC patch.

4.  New burst control: The patches you can find from our BIC web site
contain an implementation of our new burst control algorithm. It reduces
packet burst, especially, during fast recovery by controlling
packet-in-flight more intelligently.  Our test indicates that this algorithm
greatly contributes to avoidance of many timeouts and transmission rate
fluctuations.

As far as we know, there are several third-party evaluations of BIC-TCP
going on at several research and commercial sites around the world. We will
keep you updates on their results as soon as they become known to us.
Your comments/feedback will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Injong Rhee and Lisong Xu.
Department of Computer Science
North Carolina State University
http://www.csc.ncsu.edu/faculty/rhee