Design and performance evaluation of a rate feedback control architecture for TCP/IP networks

We present the design of a rate feedback architecture for TCP/IP networks. The architecture allows the traffic sources to receive periodic feedback of available rates from the network using ICMP. The sources shape their traffic according to the feedback rate. The performance of the proposed architecture is evaluated using computer simulations. Our results demonstrate that the proposed rate feedback architecture can significantly improve TCP throughput and fairness when buffering capacity in the network is extremely limited. The architecture also improves packet loss rate, delay and delay jitter in the network.