New flow control paradigm for next generation networks

Quick Flow Control Protocol (QFCP) is a new congestion control protocol designed for high bandwidth-delay product networks. QFCP has two good features: "quick start" and "quick convergence". It allows a sender to start with a high initial sending rate identified by routers along the path, and all running flows converge to the fair-share sending rate quickly based on feedback from routers. Although it needs the assistance of routers, QFCP does not require routers to store any per-flow information or to do any complex per-packet calculation. The rate allocation algorithm is quite simple and only needs to be run periodically by routers. We have implemented QFCP in Network Simulator (NS). Simulations have been done to address the issues such as fairness, convergence, responsiveness and utilization, as well as flow completion time for Poison-arriving Pareto-distributed-size flows. Performance evaluation of these simulations is presented in this paper. The preliminary results are promising