Subject: [Tsvwg] TCP for ABR-like service

From: Chris Metz <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2002 08:57:07 -0500

Hi-
Some L2 transport functions (e.g. ATM) employ closed-loop feedback 
mechanisms (e.g. ABR) to help determine their maximum fair-share of 
available bandwidth. TCP apparently does the same. I was wondering if it 
might be possible for an L2 transport function to "adjust" its sending rate 
based on "out-of-band" TCP feedback rather than employing "in-band" ABR 
feedback. Consider the following:

(TCP1)                    (TCP2)
   A-----------------------------B

- Node A sends a number of data streams to Node B. Node A and Node B also 
contains a TCP stack for control plane purposes.

- TCP1 would periodically inject (actually interleave) packets into the A 
to B data streams at some rate proportional to the number of streams and 
total bandwidth. Based on feedback from TCP2 and the movement of CWND on 
TCP1, node A may adjust its stream sending rate.

Obviously a far-fetched idea, but given TCP's maturity in this area and its 
close proximity to the data streams perhaps in need of an ABR-like 
capabilty, I was curious if there might be merit in such an idea.

Cheers ...

PS - too bad TCP/SCTP tunnels could not be used in the data path :-)

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