Transport Layer Coding for Latency Reduction in Communication Networks: a Theoretical Basis

At the center of the work – the method of decreasing the average message delay based on the error-correcting coding in the transport layer of the network model. The work estimates the gain of transport coding for of average and maximum latency reduction. The article starts with a detailed description of the theoretical network model for transmitting messages and packets, originally presented in the 70s by L. Kleinrock. The new results presented in the article concern the transmission of messages over an unreliable communication channel. The exact calculations demonstrate that the application of the transport layer encoding is possible in a wider range of initial network loads and the gain in terms of the average message delay is more prominent compared to the estimations. It was theoretically proven that in some cases it is even more beneficial to add artificial unreliability of network channels to facilitate the procedure of data link regulation. The results of the work can be applied to solve the problem of the "1-millisecond delay" announced by ITU Tactile Internet Concept.