Available Network Bandwidth Schema to Improve Performance in TCP Protocols

The TCP congestion control mechanism in standard implementations presents several problems, for example, large queue lengths in network routers and packet losses, a misleading reduce of the transmission rate when there are link failures, among others. This article proposes a schema to congestion control in TCP protocols, called NGWA, which is based on the network bandwidth. The NGWA provides information considering the available bandwidth of the network infrastructure to the endpoints of the TCP connection. Hence, it helps in choosing a better transmission rate for TCP improving its performance. Simulation results show superior performance of the proposed scheme when compared to those obtained by TCP New Reno and standard TCP. A physical implementation in the Linux kernel was performed to prove the correct operation of the proposal.