Reconsidering the Requirements for Congestion Control
by Alex Snoeren

Abstract:
In this talk, I will advocate for a new approach to Internet
congestion control we call 'decongestion control.'  Contrary to prior
approaches to congestion control, with decongestion control, hosts
transmit packets as fast as possible into the network.  We have shown
that by intelligently applying erasure coding to these packet
streams, decongestion control has the potential to deliver not only
high throughput, but also to improve traffic stability, shrink router
buffer requirements, and protect against selfish and malicious
transmission behavior.  To address natural concerns, we have
evaluated the potential for congestion collapse and find that for
today's HOT-like backbone networks, chances are slim.  I will further
demonstrate that very small buffers suffice to efficiently forward
decongestion-controlled flows, eliminating the risk of large queuing
delays.  Finally, I will briefly discuss the challenges facing a
concrete instantiation of decongestion control and use our prototype
implementation, Achoo, to quantitatively demonstrate its potential
performance benefits. Our initial results indicate that despite its
counterintuitive nature, it may be possible to realize the potential
benefits of decongestion control in the future Internet.