An adaptive buffer management mechanism for improving TCP behavior under heavy load

The setting of the queue thresholds in RED schemes is problematic because the required buffer size for good sharing among TCP connections is dependent on the number of active TCP connections using the buffer. This paper describes a technique for enhancing the effectiveness of RED schemes by dynamically changing the threshold settings as the number of connections (and system load) changes. Using this mechanism, routers and switches can effectively control packet losses and TCP timeouts while maintaining high link utilization. This mechanism is attractive for the deployment of large IP networks supporting a wide range of connections and large aggregations of traffic.