BOUNDS FOR OPTIMAL FLOW-CONTROL WINDOW SIZE DESIGN WITH APPLICATION TO HIGH-SPEED NETWORKS

In this paper, we study the problem of optimal window size design that arises in flow control of communications protocols. We consider both the sliding and pacing window flow control mechanism. We address the c ase of one data transfer session between a sender and a receiver. The assumption is that the sending station is transmitting a large volume of dat in a burst to the receiving station. There are no restrictions on the distribution of arrival or service times at the intermediate pa cket switching stations in the communication path connecting the sende r and receiver. Our criterion for optimal window size design is the ma ximization of the network power. we derive upper and lower bounds of t he optimal window size that depend on the network performance characte ristics. The main result of this paper is that the upper bound is a si mple function of the number of hops, the round trip propagation delay, and the maximum throughput of the communication path. Our analysis an d results incorporate the round trip propagation delay which may be ve ry important in the design of window sizes for high-speed networks. Th is work could be applied to a Transmission Control Protocol(TCP) conne ction over a Wide Area Network (WAN), or to a virtual Advanced Peer to Peer Networking (APPN) session.