OR&IE Colloquium and CS 789 THEORY SEMINAR [home]

Speaker: Steven Low
Affiliation: Caltech 
Place: 280 Rhodes 
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Time 3-4pm 
Title: Fast TCP

Abstract:

We interpret TCP/AQM (active queue management) as carrying out a distributed algorithm over the Internet to maximize aggregate source utility. Different protocols correspond to different optimization algorithms to solve the same prototype problem with different utility functions. All equilibrium properties such as throughput, queue length, fairness are determined by this underlying utility maximization problem. We show that the equilibrium of TCP/RED become unstable as delay increases, or more strikingly, as network capacity increases. We present an improved algorithm, FAST TCP, that adopts a different implementation strategy and can maintain stability and sustain multi-Gbps throughput over wide area, using standard MTU. We describe recent experimental results over live intercontinental networks.

(With FAST Team and Partners at http://netlab.caltech.edu/FAST )

Bio:

Steven. H. Low received his B.S. degree from Cornell University and PhD from Berkeley, both in EE. He was with AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, from 1992 to 1996 and with the University of Melbourne, Australia, from 1996 to 2000. He is now an Associate Professor at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. He was a co-recipient of the IEEE William R. Bennett Prize Paper Award in 1997 and the 1996 R&D 100 Award. He is on the editorial boards of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking and the Computer Networks Journal, and has been a guest editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.