35.3 Two-Way TCP Agents (FullTcp)

The Agent/TCP/FullTcp object is a new addition to the suite of TCP agents supported in the simulator and is still under development. It is different from (and incompatible with) the other agents, but does use some of the same architecture. It differs from these agents in the following ways: following ways:

The generation of SYN packets (and their ACKs) can be of critical importance in trying to model real-world behavior when using many very short data transfers. This version of TCP currently defaults to sending data on the 3rd segment of an initial 3-way handshake, a behavior somewhat different than common real-world TCP implementations. A ``typical'' TCP connection proceeds with an active opener sending a SYN, the passive opener responding with a SYN+ACK, the active opener responding with an ACK, and then some time later sending the first segment with data (corresponding to the first application write). Thus, this version of TCP sends data at a time somewhat earlier than typical implementations. This TCP can also be configured to send data on the initial SYN segment. Future changes to FullTCP may include a modification to send the first data segment later, and possibly to implement T/TCP functionality.

Currently FullTCP is only implemented with Reno congestion control, but ultimately it should be available with the full range of congestion control algorithms (e.g., Tahoe, SACK, Vegas, etc.).



Subsections
Tom Henderson 2011-11-05