Behavior of TCP in Congestion Control Mechanism using VLC media player

Group project by Abhishek Reddy Yeruva Vijay Krishna Nadimpalli Namratha S Kolli

Presented by Abhishek Reddy Yeruva Advisor Prof. Jedidiah R.Crandall

Project Objectives
S Record congestion control using TCP connection in

VLC.
S Record the effect of Iperf during the VLC streaming

process.
S Record the packets sent by the server and received

by the client in the process at various values of Iperf and bandwidths and study the behavior of TCP.

RoadMap

S TCP S Background Information

S Working S Results

S Helpful Commands
S Network Requirements S Design

S Analysis
S Conclusion S References

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)

S Reliable S Full-Duplex S Flow-control mechanism for byte-streams S Supports a de-multiplexing mechanism, just like UDP

TCP : Slow Start

S Source starts out by setting Congestion Window

to one packet.
S When the ACK for this packet arrives, TCP adds 1

to Congestion Window and then sends two packets. Upon receiving the corresponding two ACKs, TCP increments Congestion Window by 2one for each ACKand next sends four packets.
S The end result is that TCP effectively doubles the

number of packets it has in transit every RTT( Round Trip Time).

Image source: Computer Networks A Systems

TCP: Fast Retransmission

S Every time when a data packet arrives at

the receiving side, the receiver responds with an acknowledgment, even if this sequence number has already been acknowledged.
S When a packet arrives out of orderthat

is, TCP cannot yet acknowledge the data the packet contains because earlier data has not yet arrivedTCP resends the same acknowledgment it sent the last time.
Image source: Computer Networks A Systems

Network Congestion
S Occurs when a link or node is carrying so much data that its

quality of service deteriorates

S Typical Effects: Queuing Delay, Packet loss, Blocking of new

connections
S Congestion Control:

- Process of controlling traffic entry (or) flow of packets in network

- Various algorithms as mentioned previously are used Congestion Control

for

Iperf Command

S Network testing tool that can create TCP and UDP

data streams
S Measures the throughput of a network carrying those

streams.

Iperf : Example
S To introduce the traffic on the link between router 2 and

router 3, we
S Assume router 2 to be the server which receives the tcp

packets sent from router 3 iperf s u

S Assuming the router 3 to be the client we use the

following iperf command:

iperf c 192.168.58.254 b 0.16m t 245 c indicates client, b indicates bandwidth, t indicates time and the time is given as 245 which is the total time of the video and 192.168.58.254 is the IP address of the router 2 on eth2

Network Requirements
S 3 Routers, a Client and a Server.

S During streaming, we congest a particular link between two of the

routers by using Iperf in order to generate some traffic and create a congestion in the link.
S VLC media player acts as the tool for streaming the media file from

the server and also capturing the file at the client.

S VLC media player is used as it provides various options for

streaming a file on various transmission protocols such as TCP, UDP, RTP etc.
S VLC also acts as client and server.

Design Setup

(Diagram provided by instructor to class in 2011 CS-585 class)

Working: Step 1
S 5 Virtual Machines (VMs)

- VLC Media player running on the server - VLC Media player running on the client - Three routers
S For easy setup,

- created one VM and installed Ubuntu server edition - cloned it using the command

VboxManage clonevdi ubuntu1.vdi ubuntu2.vdi

Working: Step 2

S Client routes through the 3 routers to establish a connection

with the Server.

S Each router is a part of 2 subnets. S Each router has 3 interfaces

- eth0 for Network Address Translation(NAT) - eth1 and eth2 for local host adapters

Working: Step 3

S Start the iperf on router 2 and then on router 3 after

streaming the video on server and client.

S Simultaneously record TCP dumps
S Interrupt TCP dump record after media streaming is done S Analyze

Working: Step 4
S Record the number of the packets sent by the VLC on

port 8080 which is the TCP data sudo tcpdump r dumpfile nnn port 8080 | wc l
S Record the Iperf packets which is the number of TCP

packets and number of ARP packets.

sudo tcpdump r dumpfile nnn port not 8080 | wc l

Results

S A spreadsheet has been recorded containing the

details obtained at the server, all the routers and the client. These values were recorded for various values of the Iperf values at 0KB, 20KB, 40KB, 60KB, 80KB, 100KB.
S The results depict the graphs obtained by plotting the

Iperf values and the number of packets obtained during the stream:

Results(contd.)
Iperf=0 KB
Iperf=20 KB

Results(contd.)
Iperf=40 KB
Iperf=60 KB

Results(contd.)
Iperf=80 KB
Iperf=100 KB

Analysis of Results
S Increase in the sparsity of dots in the graphs with increase of

Iperf value
S Indicates decrease in the number of packets of VLC

transmitted with the increase in the Iperf value

S The gaps show that there was no activity in that period S Reason: Congestion in the network S Congestion increases with increasing Iperf value

Conclusion
S As the Iperf value increases the congestion in the network

increases and lesser number or percentage of VLC packets are transmitted.

S The sender will never transmit more unacknowledged data

than the size of its congestion window, so plotting the "unacknowledged" data can give a good approximation of congestion window.

Conclusions(contd.)
Iperf=80 KB Iperf=100 KB

Sample plots obtained by plotting the unacknowledged data from the streaming processes at Iperf valued at 80 KB and 100 KB.

Conclusions(contd.)

S The lower bound on the unacknowledged data is

decreasing which means that the size of congestion window is decreasing.

S It is evident that as the Iperf value or say as the

congestion on a link in the network increases (because of increase in Iperf) the streaming of a video from the server to the client becomes really difficult as a result of which we see a bad video stream at the clients side.

References

[1] Computer Networks A Systems Approach, 4th edition, by Larry L. Peterson and Bruce S. Davie [2] Wikipedia

Questions