210 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,

Vol. 2, No. 10, 2010

Comparison of Congestion Control Schemes in

Wireless LAN using Satellite link and ATM
Networks
Dr.R.Seshadri1 and Prof.N.Penchalaiah2
1
Prof.& Director of university computer center
S.V.University, Tirupati-517502,A.P.
E-mail:ravalaseshadri@gmail.com
2
Dept of CSE ASCET, Gudur-524101,A.P.
E-mail:pench_n@yahoo.com

Abstract: The number of wireless Internet service users that
use wireless LAN or satellite links has increased. The broadband
satellite Internet services have especially attracted attention
because of its characteristics such as global coverage and
robustness. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is used by
many typical applications over satellite Internet. However, a
typical TCP (such as TCP-New Reno) which has been developed
for wired networks performs poorly in wireless networks.TCP-
STAR tends to reduce throughput of the typical TCP and TCP-
Fusion is developed for wired high-speed links. In ATM
networks, The ATM Forum has chosen a rate-based scheme as
an approach to congestion control for Available Bit Rate (ABR)
services. We propose a new adaptive congestion control scheme
called the Self Detective Congestion Control (SDCC) scheme for
ATM networks. In this paper, we propose a TCP congestion
control method for improving friendliness over satellite links by
combining TCP-Fusion’s congestion control method and TCP-
STAR’s congestion control method. Also Self Detective
Congestion Control (SDCC) scheme for ATM networks. We
evaluate the performance of congestion control schemas in
various networks.
1. Introduction
The long propagation delay of satellite links
decreases performance of the typical TCP.TCP-STAR has
been proposed to solve these problems by modifying TCP
congestion control method. TCP-STAR achieves high-speed
communication by using the estimated bandwidth. However,
if TCP-STAR coexists with the typical TCP, TCP-STAR
tends to reduce throughput of the typical TCP.On the other
hand, TCP-Fusion has been proposed for wired high-speed
networks. TCP-Fusion which uses delay-based and loss-
based congestion control method achieves scalability and
friendliness to the typical TCP. However, TCP-Fusion
cannot obtain high performance over satellite Internet, since
TCP-Fusion is developed for wired high-speed links.TCP-
STAR [1][2][3] has been proposed to improve the
throughput over satellite Internet. TCP-STAR is the
congestion control method which consists of three
mechanisms; Congestion Window Setting (CWS) based on
available bandwidth, Lift Window Control (LWC), and
Acknowledgment Error Notification (AEN). In CWS and
LWC, TCP-STAR uses ABE (Available Bandwidth
Estimation) in TCP-J [4][5] as the available bandwidth
estimation method. In order to satisfy efficiency and
friendliness tradeoff of TCP, TCP-Fusion has an approach
combining a loss-based protocol and delay-based protocol.
The key concept of TCP-Fusion is that congestion window
sizes are increased aggressively whenever the network is
estimated underutilized. On the other hand, when the
network is fully utilized, TCP-Fusion tends to perform like
the typical TCP. Therefore, TCP-Fusion has a special
feature which tries to utilize the residual capacity effectively
without impacts on coexisting typical TCP flows.
The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is
recommended as a transfer mode for future B-ISDN. In
ATM networks, data from all types of communications
services is treated in the same way. That is, all data packets
are segmented into fixed length cells. Data from different
sources require different characteristics of transmission.
Therefore, two classes of traffic services, guaranteed and
ABR services, are required by ATM networks. To cope with
congestion control for the ABR services a rate-based scheme
is considered to be the best [8]. There are several rate-based
scheme proposed by the ATM Forum, such as FECN [9],
BECN [10], and PRCA [11]. The FECN scheme uses
Explicit Forward Congestion Indication (EFCI) as a single-
bit to indicate congestion in the forward direction of the VC.
In the BECN scheme, the notification cell is sent directly
from the congested points to the source. Both the FECN and
BECN scheme are based on a negative feedback rate control
paradigm. That is, a source will reduce the cell transmission
rate when it receives congestion notification cells. If, within
a predetermined period of time, the source does not receive
congestion notification cells, it will increase the current
transmission rate until it reaches the peak cell rate. But, if
the all notification cells in the backward direction will
experience extreme congestion, all the sources will increase
the rate to the peak cell rate, so the overall network
congestion collapse may occur. In order to deal with the
problem of network congestion collapse, the PRCA uses a
positive feedback rate control paradigm instead the negative
feedback. However, unfair distribution of available
bandwidth among VCs may occur because data cells from a
VC passing through more congested links will be marked
more often than those from VCs passing through fewer
congested links. Thus, VCs with more congested links in
their path will suffer from starvation, because their Allowed
Cell Rate (ACR) is lower than others. To resolve the
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 211
problems of the existing rate-based schemes, we propose a
new adaptive scheme, called SDCC scheme, based on the
following two basic concepts:
1. Positive feedback rate control which resolves the
problems of the FECN and BECN schemes.
2. Intelligent holding or selectively holding Resource
Management (RM) cells which resolves the problem of the
PRCA.
2. Congestion control in satellite internet
In order to overcome the problems of existing methods, we
propose a new TCP congestion control method which can
obtain good friendliness for the typical TCP. The proposed
method is obtained by combining TCP-Fusion and
CWS/LWC of TCP-STAR. It is assumed that the proposal
will be able to obtain good friendliness by using TCP-Fusion
and higher throughput by CWS and LWC over the satellite
Internet. Following subsections show the detail of the
proposed method.
2.1. Congestion Window Decrement
When the proposal detects packet losses, the congestion
window (cwnd) and slow start threshold (ssthresh) are set
by using CWS.
2.1.1 Detection of Packet Losses by Duplicate ACKs:
If the proposed method detects packet losses by duplicate
ACKs, it sets cwnd and ssthresh by Eq.(1).
packet_size indicate updated congestion window,
previous congestion window, estimated available bandwidth,
minimum round trip time, and packet size, respectively
BWRE is obtained by using Rate Estimation (RE) which is
one of the mechanism of TCP-Westwood[2][3].
4.1 2.1.2 Detection of Packet Losses by Retransmission
Timeout:
If the retransmission timeout occurs, the proposed method
sets cwnd and ssthresh by Eq.(2).
Vol. 2, No. 10, 2010
2.2. Congestion Window Increment
Original TCP-Fusion has three phases (increment phase,
decrement phase, and steady phase) in case of updating the
congestion window. In the proposed method, we apply LWC
of TCP-STAR in the increment phase of TCP-Fusion.
Window control of decrement phase and steady phase are
same as original TCP-Fusion. Eq.(3) shows the congestion
window behavior of the proposed method which uses LWC.
In Eq.(3)diff,target_win indicate the number of estimated
packets in bottleneck router queue, lower bound threshold to
switch three phases, and additional window size by LWC,
respectively target_win is calculated by Eq.(4).
In Eq. (4), BWABE shows the bottleneck bandwidth and it is
obtained by using ABE of TCP-STAR.
3. Congestion control in ATM networks (SDCC
Scheme)
In this section, we describe the basic operation of the SDCC
scheme.
3.1 Network Elements
The network elements of a VC, implementing a rate-based
end-to-end feedback loop control scheme, the Virtual
Connection Source (VCS), Virtual Connection Destination
(VCD) and ATM Switch (SW) are shown in Fig. 1. The
VCS and VCD generate and receive ATM cells. They are
the extreme points of a VC. The VC is a bidirectional
connection. The forward and backward connections have the
same virtual connection identifiers and pass through
identical transmission facilities. The VCS must have the
ability to transmit cells into the network at a variable and
controlled rate from a predetermined minimum cell rate to
peak cell rate. On the other hand, the VCD must return
every received RM cell to the VCS in the backward
connection in order to support the closed loop control
scheme.
212
Figure1. Network elements of a VC
ATM switches route ATM cells from the VCS to the
VCD, and each ATM switch has an identifier in the form of
an address number. We assume that an ATM switch has
output buffers divided into two parts: one for data cell use
and the other one for RM cell use. Each part of the buffer
implements FIFO cell queuing discipline. The buffer service
algorithm always serves the RM cells in preference to the
data cells. That is, RM cells have a higher service priority
than data cells.
3.2 Basic Operation
The model of the basic SDCC scheme, in which every VC
has one RM cell for congestion control purpose, is
illustrated in Fig. 2.We refer to this scheme as the self
detective congestion control scheme because the VCS itself
generates and sends out the RM cell to detect congestion
which may occur at its bottleneck switch. The bottleneck
switch is the switch which has the narrowest bandwidth
between the switches in a VC. The bottleneck switch is
considered to be known from the initial routine and its
address is written in the SWI field of the RM cell. The VCS
starts a timer every time it transmits a RM cell. The timer
starts to count down from a predetermined value, CD_Time
(Congestion Detection Time), until it reaches 0. The
CD_Time is a variable of the VCS, which is determined
before the RM cell is sent out for the first time.
The VCD returns the received RM cell to
the VCS in backward connection. If the output buffer of the
bottleneck switch is congested, the bottleneck switch will
hold RM cells flowing in the backward direction until it
recovers from the congestion state. The bottleneck switch
will pass all received RM cells without considerable delay if
no congestion is detected, since the RM cells have higher
priority.
Figure 2. VCs with their RM cells
(IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security,
Vol. 2, No. 10, 2010
When the timer expires and the RM cell has not returned
back yet, the VCS considers its bottleneck switch to be
congested, and decreases the cell rate at regular
predetermined intervals, until it receives the RM cell. On
receiving the RM cell, the VCS considers its bottleneck
switch decongested if the timer is still on, or if its bottleneck
switch has been recovered from congestion state. The VCS
will then increase its cell rate proportional to the current
rate. The RM cell will be sent out to the network again if the
VCS has transmitted a Number of Cell (NC) or more data
cells since the RM cell was sent out during the previous
round.This procedure reduces the amount of RM cell traffic
when the cell rate of the VC is low or when the VC enters
an idle state. The VCS is considered idle if at the current
rate it isn’t transmitted any data cell in an interval of length
corresponding to NC interval.
By implementing intelligent holding, the VCs having the
same bottleneck link will share the available bandwidth
fairly. The intelligent holding means, all RM cells
belonging to the VCs are not selected by each congested
switch, but they are selected only by the bottleneck switch
when it is congested. The fair sharing occurs because in the
equilibrium state the VCs will increase and decrease their
rate to approximately the same level.
4. Comparisons between satellite internet and
ATM network
Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through
satellites.The service can be provided to users world-wide
through Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Geostationary
satellites can offer higher data speeds, but their signals can
not reach some polar regions of the world. Different types of
satellite systems have a wide range of different features and
technical limitations, which can greatly affect their
usefulness and performance in specific applications.Satellite
internet customers range from individual home users with
one PC to large remote business sites with several hundred
PCs.Home users tend to make use of shared satellite
capacity, to reduce the cost, while still allowing high peak
bit rates when congestion is absent. There are usually
restrictive time based bandwidth allowances so that each
user gets their fair share, according to their payment. When
a user exceeds their Mbytes allowances, the company may
slow down their access; deprioritise their traffic or charge
for the excess bandwidth used.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode is a cell-based switching
technique that uses asynchronous time division
multiplexing. It encodes data into small fixed-sized cells
(cell relay) and provides data link layer services that run
over OSI Layer 1 physical links. This differs from other
technologies based on packet-switched networks (such as the
Internet Protocol or Ethernet) in which variable sized
packets (known as frames when referencing Layer 2) are
used. ATM exposes properties from both circuit switched
and small packet switched networking, making it suitable
for wide area data networking as well as real-time media
transport.ATM uses a connection-oriented model and
establishes a virtual circuit between two endpoints before the
actual data exchange begins. ATM is a core protocol used
 (IJCNS) International Journal of Computer and Network Security, 213
over the SONET/SDH backbone of the Integrated Services
Digital Network
Table1: Comparison between Satellite network and
ATM network
Satellite ATM network
internet
Packet size Variable Fixed length
length
Connection wireless Connection
oriented
Mechanism Traffic Traffic
shaping shaping
Bandwidth High Low
5. Conclusion
This paper proposed a new TCP congestion control method
for improving TCP friendliness over the satellite Internet.
We proposed a new adaptive rate-based scheme, called
SDCC, for coping with congestion control in ATM
networks. The SDCC scheme uses the positive feedback rate
control and intelligent holding in each switch in order to
resolve the problems which happen in FECN, BECN and
PRCA.Finally the proposed methods are good at respective
networks. And congestion control in satellite internet is
done effectively than ATM networks when traffic conditions
are good.
References
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Congestion Control Method Considering Adaptability
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Vol. 2, No. 10, 2010
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Author’s Profile
Dr.R.Seshadri working as Professor &
Director, University Computer Centre, Sri
Venkateswara University, Tirupati. He was
completed his PhD in S.V.University in 1998
in the field of “ Simulation Modeling &
Compression of E.C.G. Data Signals (Data
compression Techniques) Electronics &
Communication Egg.”. He has richest of
knowledge in Research field, he is guiding 10
PhD in Fulltime as well as Part time. He has vast experience in
teaching of 26 years. He published 10 national and international
conferences and 8 papers published different Journals.
Prof.N.Penchalaiah Research Scholar in
SV University, Tirupati and Working as
Professor in CSE Dept,ASCET,Gudur.
He was completed his M.Tech in
Sathyabama University in 2006. He has
10 years of teaching experience. He
guided PG & UG Projects. He published
2 Inter National journals and 2 national
Conferences.