TCPTuner: Congestion Control Your Way

TL;DR

TCPTuner is a Linux tool that enables real-time tuning of TCP CUBIC congestion control parameters through a GUI, facilitating better network performance management.

Contribution

It introduces a novel kernel module and GUI for live adjustment of TCP CUBIC parameters, enhancing flexibility in congestion control experimentation.

Findings

Adjusting alpha impacts throughput and stability.

Modifying beta influences loss recovery speed.

Parameter tuning improves network performance in real-time.

Abstract

TCPTuner is a TCP (transmission control protocol) congestion control kernel module and GUI (graphical user interface) for Linux that allows real-time modification of the congestion control parameters of TCP CUBIC, the current default algorithm in Linux. Specifically, the tool provides access to alpha, the rate at which a sender's congestion window grows; beta, the multiplicative factor to decrease the congestion window on a loss event; as well as CUBIC's fast convergence and tcp friendliness parameters. Additionally, the interface provides access to ip-route parameters for the minimum retransmission time and initial congestion window size. In this paper, we describe the implementation of TCPTuner and show experimental data of the effects of adjusting congestion control parameters.