Dynamic analysis of congested TCP networks

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study the small-signal stability of congested TCP networks. The starting point for this analysis is a fluid model describing the interaction of TCP-controlled traffic with congested routers. Assuming integral action in the active queue management scheme, we compute the network's equilibrium point about which we determine the network's small-signal dynamics. Specializing to networks comprised of m links and m+1 sources, we study closed-loop stability, study network scaling, and evaluate robustness to variations in network parameters.