QUIC is increasingly being deployed on the Internet as an alternative to TCP. However, QUIC over satellite links faces particular challenges as high and variable round-trip times (RTTs) make it difficult to determine and then reach link capacity. Standard slow start algorithms to detect link capacity can perform poorly over satellite links, often exiting slow start too early and limiting throughput or exiting too late and causing unnecessary packet loss. The Slow start Exit At Right CHokepoint (SEARCH) aims to exit slow start after reaching link capacity but before incurring packet loss by tracking delivery rates and exiting when rates have not increased by the expected amount. SEARCH has shown benefits over traditional slow start for TCP connections but has yet to be implemented and evaluated in QUIC. This paper presents the design and implementation of SEARCH in an open-source QUIC library, with the code publicly available as a contribution. Evaluation of SEARCH over a geostationary satellite link show SEARCH successfully exits slow start before loss in the majority of cases, improving goodput compared to the baseline.

Materials:

• Paper draft: pdf
• Slides: (pending)

See also:

• Xiaokun Xu and Mark Claypool. Measurement of Cloud-based Game Streaming System Response to Competing TCP Cubic or TCP BBR Flows, In Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Nice, France, October 25-27, 2022. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/game-stream-imc-22/

• Xiaokun Xu and Mark Claypool. Measurement of the Responses of Cloud-based Game Streaming to Network Congestion, In Proceedings of the 32nd ACM International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Athlone, Ireland, June 17, 2022. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/game-stream-nossdav-22/

• Xiaokun Xu and Mark Claypool. A First Look at the Network Turbulence for Google Stadia Cloud-based Game Streaming, In Proceedings of the IEEE Global Internet Symposium (GI), Virtual Conference, May 10, 2021. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/stadia-net-gi-21/

• Mark Claypool, David Finkel, Alexander Grant and Michael Solano. On the Performance of OnLive Thin Client Games, Springer Multimedia Systems Journal (MMSJ) - Special Issue on Network Systems Support for Games, Volume 20, Issue 5, Pages 471-484, DOI 10.1007/s00530-014-0362-4, February 2014. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/onlive-journal/