Session-level simulation
Status
With Lili Qiu.

Simulations trade off the level of detail with the size of the simulation and its speed. In a session level simulation, we do not simulate individual packets, but only flows or sesssions. This allows us to simulate much larger networks at a lower level of detail. In this work, we are exploring an empirical approach to session-level simulation, essentially by abstracting relevent information from a ensemble of packet-level simulations.

 

As the most widely used reliable transport in today's Internet, TCP has been extensively studied in the past decade. However, previous research usually only considers a small or medium number of concurrent TCP connections. The TCP behavior under many competing TCP flows has not been sufficiently explored.

In this project, we use extensive simulations to investigate the individual and aggregate TCP performance for large number of concurrent TCP flows. We have made three major contributions. First, we develop an abstract network model that captures the essence of wide-area Internet connections. Second, we study the performance of a single TCP flow with many competing TCP flows by evaluating the best-known analytical model proposed in the literature. Finally, we examine the aggregate TCP behavior exhibited by many concurrent TCP flows, and derive general conclusions about the overall throughput, goodput, and loss probability.

Here is our paper that describes details about our work: On Individual and Aggregate TCP Performance, Cornell CS Technical Report, May 1999.