Modeling two-windows TCP behavior in differentiated services networks

Two important issues in assured services within differentiated services architecture are bandwidth guarantee and fair sharing of unsubscribed bandwidth among TCP flows with and without bandwidth reservations. Although the subscribed bandwidth can be guaranteed by increasing network capacity or deploying strict admission control mechanisms, the costs of such solutions are very high. The issue of fair sharing of excess bandwidth is also not well solved. To address those issues, a modified TCP, named two-windows TCP, has been proposed. The performance of the protocol is evaluated by simulations. But its effectiveness is not validated theoretically under general network conditions, which is important for understanding the benefits and costs of using the protocol. In this paper, an analytical model is developed for the purpose. The model characterizes throughput of individual two-windows TCP flow as a function of contract rate, round trip time, loss rates of In and Out packets. Extensive simulations validate the analytical model. It's shown two-windows TCP is effective not only on solving the issues of bandwidth guarantee and fair sharing of unsubscribed bandwidth, but also on increasing the utilization of bottleneck link bandwidth. Moreover, its performance is robust to network conditions, which is important for wide deployment over Internet.