Next Generation TCP

Deployment of Active Networks severely increases per-packet cost of routers, shifting their performance limitation from bytes/sec to packets/sec. We address this issue by presenting a method to decrease packets transmitted for next generation, queuing delay based TCP implementations by accumulating acknowledgements when a stable network state is detected. Simulation results show acknowledgements can be reduced by 70% in uncongested, high bandwidth, low latency environments while throughput is only decreased by 3% and fairness is still maintained. The main highlight is a Linux Kernel implementation that is able to fully maintain throughput but only needs 7% of the acknowledgements in a local area network environment. All modifications are client side only and do not require modifications on the sender.