[e2e] Are Packet Trains / Packet Bursts a Problem in TCP?

[Sireen Malik]

Detelf,

> At least when burstiness becomes an issue, I believe its easier to 
> avoid burstiness, or to alleviate, when we know the reasons for 
> burstiness.
>

A few pointers....

Web-pages have large variance - enough to start another discussion of 
heavy-tailed distributions ;-) This is one source of burstiness. Hard to 
cure! Or, is it?

TCP is bursty, too. It's like an on-off source: A bunch of packets are 
sent in a window in the on-phase, etc. People ahve argued about 
"shaping" TCP packet generation process to address this burstiness at 
small time scales. Look for Biplab Sikdar paper from this century. My 
ex-colleague at TUHH Dirk Abendroth also did a take on this.

Mark Crovella, et. al showed that under heavy loss conditions, TCP 
causes pseduo self-similarity.

...
Hope that helps,

--
SM