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Car pooling on the Net: Performance and Implications

Small packets dominate Internet traffic patterns today. The overhead due to queuing, processing, routing, differential treatment, and delivery is the same irrespective of the size of the packet. Hence, small packets impose a relatively higher overhead on the network. The domination of small packet traffic is expected to get only worse with the ever increasing web applications and the introduction of new applications such as Voice over IP. To mitigate the impact of small packets, we suggest a novel approach of combining multiple small packets going towards the same destination; akin to car (packet) pooling. We report the results of extensive simulation studies to determine the performance benefits of packet pooling on web servers. In addition, we analyze some of the side-effects of aggregation and evaluate the impact of aggregation on TCP and suggest corrective measures. We also evaluate the impact of aggregating non-responsive flows (small packet UDP traffic) on TCP and we discover that aggregation can be used to lessen the impact of non-responsive flows on TCP up to certain levels of offered UDP load. Furthermore, we can use these performance results as a guide to determine the level of aggregation and incentives required for flows to be subject to aggregation so as to improve the overall network performance.