TCP Behavior in Quality of Service Networks

Best effort networks fail to deliver the level of service emerging Internet applications demand. As a result many networks are being transformed to Quality of Service (QoS) networks, of which most are Differentiated Services (DiffServ) networks. While the deployment of such networks has been feasible, it is extremely difficult to overhaul the transport layer protocols such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) running on hundreds of millions of end nodes around the world. TCP, which has been designed to run on a best effort network, perform poorly in a DiffServ network. It fails to deliver the performance guarantees expected of DiffServ. In this thesis we investigate two aspects of TCP performance in a DiffServ network unaccounted for in previous studies. We develop a deterministic model of TCP that intrinsically captures flow aggregation, a key component of DiffServ. The other important aspect of TCP considered in this thesis is its’ transient behavior. Using our deterministic model we derive a classical control system model of TCP applicable in a DiffServ network. Performance issues of TCP can potentially inhibit the adoption of DiffServ. A DiffServ network commonly use token buckets, that are placed at the edge of the network, t