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1.12: Transport

  • Page ID
    11073
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    The IP layer gets packets from one node to another, but it is not well-suited to transport. First, IP routing is a “best-effort” mechanism, which means packets can and do get lost sometimes. Additionally, data that does arrive can arrive out of order. Finally, IP only supports sending to a specific host; normally, one wants to send to a given application running on that host. Email and web traffic, or two different web sessions, should not be commingled!

    The Transport layer is the layer above the IP layer that handles these sorts of issues, often by creating some sort of connection abstraction. Far and away the most popular mechanism in the Transport layer is the Transmission Control Protocol, or TCP. TCP extends IP with the following features:

    • reliability: TCP numbers each packet, and keeps track of which are lost and retransmits them after a timeout. It holds early-arriving out-of-order packets for delivery at the correct time. Every arriving data packet is acknowledged by the receiver; timeout and retransmission occurs when an acknowledgment packet isn’t received by the sender within a given time.
    • connection-orientation: Once a TCP connection is made, an application sends data simply by writing to that connection. No further application-level addressing is needed. TCP connections are managed by the operating-system kernel, not by the application.
    • stream-orientation: An application using TCP can write 1 byte at a time, or 100 kB at a time; TCP will buffer and/or divide up the data into appropriate sized packets.
    • port numbers: these provide a way to specify the receiving application for the data, and also to identify the sending application.
    • throughput management: TCP attempts to maximize throughput, while at the same time not contributing unnecessarily to network congestion.

    TCP endpoints are of the form ⟨host,port⟩; these pairs are known as socket addresses, or sometimes as just sockets though the latter refers more properly to the operating-system objects that receive the data sent to the socket addresses. Servers (or, more precisely, server applications) listen for connections to sockets they have opened; the client is then any endpoint that initiates a connection to a server.

    When you enter a host name in a web browser, it opens a TCP connection to the server’s port 80 (the standard web-traffic port), that is, to the server socket with socket-address ⟨server,80⟩. If you have several browser tabs open, each might connect to the same server socket, but the connections are distinguishable by virtue of using separate ports (and thus having separate socket addresses) on the client end (that is, your end).

    A busy server may have thousands of connections to its port 80 (the web port) and hundreds of connections to port 25 (the email port). Web and email traffic are kept separate by virtue of the different ports used. All those clients to the same port, though, are kept separate because each comes from a unique ⟨host,port⟩ pair. A TCP connection is determined by the ⟨host,port⟩ socket address at each end; traffic on different connections does not intermingle. That is, there may be multiple independent connections to ⟨www.luc.edu,80⟩. This is somewhat analogous to certain business telephone numbers of the “operators are standing by” type, which support multiple callers at the same time to the same toll-free number. Each call to that number is answered by a different operator (corresponding to a different cpu process), and different calls do not “overhear” each other.

    TCP uses the sliding-windows algorithm, 6 Abstract Sliding Windows, to keep multiple packets en route at any one time. The window size represents the number of packets simultaneously in transit (TCP actually keeps track of the window size in bytes, but packets are easier to visualize). If the window size is 10 packets, for example, then at any one time 10 packets are in transit (perhaps 5 data packets and 5 returning acknowledgments). Assuming no packets are lost, then as each acknowledgment arrives the window “slides forward” by one packet. The data packet 10 packets ahead is then sent, to maintain a total of 10 packets on the wire. For example, consider the moment when the ten packets 20-29 are in transit. When ACK[20] is received, the number of packets outstanding drops to 9 (packets 21-29). To keep 10 packets in flight, Data[30] is sent. When ACK[21] is received, Data[31] is sent, and so on.

    Sliding windows minimizes the effect of store-and-forward delays, and propagation delays, as these then only count once for the entire windowful and not once per packet. Sliding windows also provides an automatic, if partial, brake on congestion: the queue at any switch or router along the way cannot exceed the window size. In this it compares favorably with constant-rate transmission, which, if the available bandwidth falls below the transmission rate, always leads to overflowing queues and to a significant percentage of dropped packets. Of course, if the window size is too large, a sliding-windows sender may also experience dropped packets.

    The ideal window size, at least from a throughput perspective, is such that it takes one round-trip time to send an entire window, so that the next ACK will always be arriving just as the sender has finished transmitting the window. Determining this ideal size, however, is difficult; for one thing, the ideal size varies with network load. As a result, TCP approximates the ideal size. The most common TCP strategy – that of so-called TCP Reno – is that the window size is slowly raised until packet loss occurs, which TCP takes as a sign that it has reached the limit of available network resources. At that point the window size is reduced to half its previous value, and the slow climb resumes. The effect is a “sawtooth” graph of window size with time, which oscillates (more or less) around the “optimal” window size. For an idealized sawtooth graph, see 13.1.1 The Somewhat-Steady State; for some “real” (simulation-created) sawtooth graphs see 16.4.1 Some TCP Reno cwnd graphs.

    While this window-size-optimization strategy has its roots in attempting to maximize the available bandwidth, it also has the effect of greatly limiting the number of packet-loss events. As a result, TCP has come to be the Internet protocol charged with reducing (or at least managing) congestion on the Internet, and – relatedly – with ensuring fairness of bandwidth allocations to competing connections. Core Internet routers – at least in the classical case – essentially have no role in enforcing congestion or fairness restrictions at all. The Internet, in other words, places responsibility for congestion avoidance cooperatively into the hands of end users. While “cheating” is possible, this cooperative approach has worked remarkably well.

    While TCP is ubiquitous, the real-time performance of TCP is not always consistent: if a packet is lost, the receiving TCP host will not turn over anything further to the receiving application until the lost packet has been retransmitted successfully; this is often called head-of-line blocking. This is a serious problem for sound and video applications, which can discretely handle modest losses but which have much more difficulty with sudden large delays. A few lost packets ideally should mean just a few brief voice dropouts (pretty common on cell phones) or flicker/snow on the video screen (or just reuse of the previous frame); both of these are better than pausing completely.

    The basic alternative to TCP is known as UDP, for User Datagram Protocol. UDP, like TCP, provides port numbers to support delivery to multiple endpoints within the receiving host, in effect to a specific process on the host. As with TCP, a UDP socket consists of a ⟨host,port⟩ pair. UDP also includes, like TCP, a checksum over the data. However, UDP omits the other TCP features: there is no connection setup, no lost-packet detection, no automatic timeout/retransmission, and the application must manage its own packetization. This simplicity should not be seen as all negative: the absence of connection setup means data transmission can get started faster, and the absence of lost-packet detection means there is no head-of-line blocking. See 11 UDP Transport.

    The Real-time Transport Protocol, or RTP, sits above UDP and adds some additional support for voice and video applications.

  • 1.12.1 Transport Communications Patterns

    The two “classic” traffic patterns for Internet communication are these:

    • Interactive or bursty communications such as via ssh or telnet, with long idle times between short bursts
    • Bulk file transfers, such as downloading a web page

    TCP handles both of these well, although its congestion-management features apply only when a large amount of data is in transit at once. Web browsing is something of a hybrid; over time, there is usually considerable burstiness, but individual pages now often exceed 1 MB.

    To the above we might add request/reply operations, eg to query a database or to make DNS requests. TCP is widely used here as well, though most DNS traffic still uses UDP. There are periodic calls for a new protocol specifically addressing this pattern, though at this point the use of TCP is well established. If a sequence of request/reply operations is envisioned, a single TCP connection makes excellent sense, as the connection-setup overhead is minimal by comparison. See also 11.5 Remote Procedure Call (RPC) and 12.22.2 SCTP.

    This century has seen an explosion in streaming video (20.3.2 Streaming Video), in lengths from a few minutes to a few hours. Streaming radio stations might be left playing indefinitely. TCP generally works well here, assuming the receiver can get, say, a minute ahead, buffering the video that has been received but not yet viewed. That way, if there is a dip in throughput due to congestion, the receiver has time to recover. Buffering works a little less well for streaming radio, as the listener doesn’t want to get too far behind, though ten seconds is reasonable. Fortunately, audio bandwidth is smaller.

    Another issue with streaming video is the bandwidth demand. Most streaming-video services attempt to estimate the available throughput, and then adapt to that throughput by changing the video resolution (20.3 Real-time Traffic).

    Typically, video streaming operates on a start/stop basis: the sender pauses when the receiver’s playback buffer is “full”, and resumes when the playback buffer drops below a certain threshold.

    If the video (or, for that matter, voice audio) is interactive, there is much less opportunity for stream buffering. If someone asks a simple question on an Internet telephone call, they generally want an answer more or less immediately; they do not expect to wait for the answer to make it through the other party’s stream buffer. 200 ms of buffering is noticeable. Here we enter the realm of genuine real-time traffic (20.3 Real-time Traffic). UDP is often used to avoid head-of-line blocking. Lower bandwidth helps; voice-grade communications traditionally need only 8 kB/sec, less if compression is used. On the other hand, there may be constraints on the variation in delivery time (known as jitter; see 20.11.3 RTP Control Protocol for a specific numeric interpretation). Interactive video, with its much higher bandwidth requirements, is more difficult; fortunately, users seem to tolerate the common pauses and freezes.

    Within the Transport layer, essentially all network connections involve a client and a server. Often this pattern is repeated at the Application layer as well: the client contacts the server and initiates a login session, or browses some web pages, or watches a movie. Sometimes, however, Application-layer exchanges fit the peer-to-peer model better, in which the two endpoints are more-or-less co-equals. Some examples include

    • Internet telephony: there is no benefit in designating the party who place the call as the “client”
    • Message passing in a CPU cluster, often using 11.5 Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
    • The routing-communication protocols of 9 Routing-Update Algorithms. When router A reports to router B we might call A the client, but over time, as A and B report to one another repeatedly, the peer-to-peer model makes more sense.
    • So-called peer-to-peer file-sharing, where individuals exchange files with other individuals (and as opposed to “cloud-based” file-sharing in which the “cloud” is the server).

    RFC 5694 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5694.html] contains additional discussion of peer-to-peer patterns.

  • 1.12.2 Content-Distribution Networks

    Sites with an extremely large volume of content to distribute often turn to a specialized communication pattern called a content-distribution network or CDN. To reduce the amount of long-distance traffic, or to reduce the round-trip time, a site replicates its content at multiple datacenters (also called Points of Presence (PoPs), nodes, access points or edge servers). When a user makes a request (eg for a web page or a video), the request is routed to the nearest (or approximately nearest) datacenter, and the content is delivered from there.

    Large web pages typically contain both static content and also individualized dynamic content. On a typical Facebook page, for example, the videos and javascript might be considered static, while the individual wall posts might be considered dynamic. The CDN may cache all or most of the static content at each of its edge servers, leaving the dynamic content to come from a centralized server. Alternatively, the dynamic content may be replicated at each CDN edge node as well, though this introduces some real-time coordination issues.

    If dynamic content is not replicated, the CDN may include private high-speed links between its nodes, allowing for rapid low-congestion delivery to any node. Alternatively, CDN nodes may simply communicate using the public Internet. Finally, the CDN may (or may not) be configured to support fast interactive traffic between nodes, eg teleconferencing traffic, as is outlined in 20.6.1 A CDN Alternative to IntServ.

    Organizations can create their own CDNs, but often turn to specialized CDN providers, who often combine their CDN services with website-hosting services.

    In principle, all that is needed to create a CDN is a multiplicity of datacenters, each with its own connection to the Internet; private links between datacenters are also common. In practice, many CDN providers also try to build direct connections with the ISPs that serve their customers; the Google Edge Network above does this. This can improve performance and reduce traffic costs; we will return to this in 10.6.7.1 MED values and traffic engineering.

    Finding the edge server that is closest to a given user is a tricky issue. There are three techniques in common use. In the first, the edge servers are all given different IP addresses, and DNS is configured to have users receive the IP address of the closest edge server, 7.8 DNS. In the second, each edge server has the same IP address, and anycast routing is used to route traffic from the user to the closest edge server, 10.6.8 BGP and Anycast. Finally, for HTTP applications a centralized server can look up the approximate location of the user, and then redirect the web page to the closest edge server.


  • This page titled 1.12: Transport is shared under a CC BY-NC-ND license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Peter Lars Dordal.

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