An evaluation of TCP with larger initial windows

Abstract

TCP's slow start algorithm gradually increases the amount of data a sender injects into the network, which prevents the sender from overwhelming the network with an inappropriately large burst of traffic. However, the slow start algorithm can make poor use of the available bandwidth for transfers which are small compared to the bandwidth-delay product of the link, such as file transfers up to few thousand characters over satellite links or even transfers of several hundred bytes over local area networks. This paper evaluates a proposed performance enhancement that raises the initial window used by TCP from 1 MSS-sized segment to roughly 4 KB. The paper evaluates the impact of using larger initial windows on TCP transfers over both the shared Internet and dialup modem links.