Improving TCP performance in ATM network by the fast TCP flow control

The essential idea of fast TCP (F-TCP) is to delay TCP acknowledgment (ACK) traveling towards its TCP source through a node where its forward channel is congested. By the analysis of the simulation results of a simple example, it can be seen that: (1) F-TCP smoothes the peak of the TCP flow, consequently F-TCP reduce the requirement of the ATM buffer; (2) with the same size of ATM buffer, F-TCP reduces the probability of overflow and as a result, improve the TCP throughput; and (3) F-TCP reduces ATM buffer oscillation, since most of the time the TCP is in a congestion avoidance phase after short period of the slow start phase, the flow is fairly smooth and the ATM buffer utilization is improved.