Analysis of FAST TCP for Multiple-Streams Implementation

Abstract

From congestion control point of view, TCP variants are divided in two main categories, one using loss based congestion control algorithm and second, using delay based congestion control algorithm. FAST TCP is one of the TCP variants which uses delay based congestion control algorithm and it is suitable for large distance and high bandwidth delay product networks. TCP and all its variants use single byte-stream within its connection which don't adequately support request concurrency of applications that become a reason of head of line blocking. So, single streamed transport protocols have overall negative effect on application performance. In this paper the use of multistream mechanism in a single connection of FAST TCP is proposed, which provide two benefits. First is to reduce data delivery latency between transport and application layer. Second is to reduce head of line blocking. All possible issues are identified which could be faced while incorporating multistream mechanism into FAST TCP and solution of those issues are analyzed