The Slow start Exit At Right CHokepoint (SEARCH) algorithm is designed to exit the TCP slow start phase after the flow has reached the link capacity but before packets have been lost. To do this, SEARCH keeps a history of the bytes delivered over a recent time window, aggregated into bins. Unfortunately, this delivery history must be kept per-flow, adding additional memory load for each TCP connection. We address this per-flow memory load by observing that SEARCH only needs the relative number of bytes delivered and propose a bit-shifting technique that dynamically compresses bin values as needed. Our approach is tunable to the memory-use reduction required compared to the delivery precision needed. Evaluation of our approach over a satellite network shows SEARCH bin memory use can be reduced by 50% or even 75% without any significant sacrifice in SEARCH algorithm accuracy. Our approach is generalizable to other network algorithms, too, reducing memory use for algorithms that use sliding windows and historical data tracking.

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See also:

• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Joshua Chung, Amber Cronin, Benjamin Peters, Feng Li, Jae Won Chung, and Mark Claypool. Implementation of the SEARCH Slow Start Algorithm in the Linux Kernel, In Proceedings of the 0x18 NetDev Conference, Santa Clara, California, USA, July 2024. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/search-netdev-24/

• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Jae Chung, Feng Li, Benjamin Peters, Josh Chung, and Mark Claypool. Improving TCP Slow Start Performance in Wireless Networks with SEARCH, In Proceedings of the IEEE World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM), Perth, Australia, June 2024. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/search-wowmom-24/

• Amber Cronin, Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Jae Chung, Feng Li, Benjamin Peters, and Mark Claypool. Improving QUIC Slow Start Behavior in Wireless Networks with SEARCH, In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Local and Metropolitan Area Networks (LANMAN), Boston, MA, USA, July 2024. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/quic-search-lanman-24/

• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Jae Chung, Feng Li, Benjamin Peters, and Mark Claypool. SEARCH: Robust TCP Slow Start Performance over Satellite Networks, In Proceedings of the 48th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN), Daytona Beach, FL, USA, October 1-5, 2023. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/search-lcn-23/

• Maryam Ataei Kachooei, Pinhan Zhao, Feng Li, Jae Won Chung, and Mark Claypool. Fixing TCP Slow Start for Slow Fat Links, In Proceedings of the 0x16 NetDev Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, October 2022. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/tcp-best-netdev-22/

• Benjamin Peters, Pinhan Zhao, Jae Won Chung, and Mark Claypool. TCP HyStart Performance over a Satellite Network, In Proceedings of the 0x15 NetDev Conference, Virtual Conference, July 2021. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/tcp-hystart-netdev-21/