2581: TCP Congestion Control.

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This document defines TCP's four intertwined congestion control algorithms: slow start, congestion avoidance, fast retransmit, and fast recovery. In addition, the document specifies how TCP should begin transmission after a relatively long idle period, as well as discussing various acknowledgment generation methods.

Status PROPOSED STANDARD
Format TXT=31351 bytes
Authors W. Stevens V. Paxson
Date April 1999
Keyphrases TCP congestion Congestion Control ACK

Updated by

RFC3390: Increasing TCP's Initial Window.

Obsoletes

RFC2001: TCP Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, Fast Retransmit, and Fast Recovery Algorithms.

References

RFC793: Transmission Control Protocol.
RFC813: Window and Acknowledgement Strategy in
RFC1122: Requirements for Internet Hosts - Communication Layers.
RFC1191: Path MTU discovery.
RFC2001: TCP Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, Fast Retransmit, and Fast Recovery Algorithms.
RFC2018: TCP Selective Acknowledgment Options.
RFC2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels.
RFC2414: Increasing TCP's Initial Window.
RFC2525: Known TCP Implementation Problems.
RFC2582: The NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm.

Referenced by

RFC2582: The NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm.
RFC2757: Long Thin Networks.
RFC2760: Ongoing TCP Research Related to Satellites.
RFC2775: Internet Transparency.
RFC2861: TCP Congestion Window Validation.
RFC2883: An Extension to the Selective Acknowledgement (SACK) Option for
RFC2884: Performance Evaluation of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) in IP Networks.
RFC2914: Congestion Control Principles.
RFC2923: TCP Problems with Path MTU Discovery.
RFC2960: Stream Control Transmission Protocol.
RFC2988: Computing TCP's Retransmission Timer.
RFC2991: Multipath Issues in Unicast and Multicast Next-Hop Selection.
RFC3002: Overview of 2000 IAB Wireless Internetworking Workshop.
RFC3010: NFS version 4 Protocol.
RFC3042: Enhancing TCP's Loss Recovery Using Limited Transmit.
RFC3124: The Congestion Manager.
RFC3148: A Framework for Defining Empirical Bulk Transfer Capacity Metrics.
RFC3150: End-to-end Performance Implications of Slow Links.
RFC3155: End-to-end Performance Implications of Links with Errors.
RFC3168: The Addition of Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) to
RFC3286: An Introduction to the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP).
RFC3366: Advice to link designers on link Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ).
RFC3390: Increasing TCP's Initial Window.
RFC3449: TCP Performance Implications of Network Path Asymmetry.
RFC3465: TCP Congestion Control with Appropriate Byte Counting (ABC).
RFC3481: TCP over Second (2.5G) and Third (3G) Generation Wireless Networks.
RFC3517: A Conservative Selective Acknowledgment (SACK)-based Loss Recovery Algorithm for
RFC3522: The Eifel Detection Algorithm for
RFC3539: Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) Transport Profile.
RFC3599: Request for Comments Summary RFC Numbers 3500-3599.
RFC3649: HighSpeed TCP for Large Congestion Windows.
RFC3708: Using TCP Duplicate Selective Acknowledgement (DSACKs) and Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Duplicate Transmission Sequence Numbers (TSNs) to Detect Spurious Retransmissions.
RFC3714: IAB Concerns Regarding Congestion Control for Voice Traffic in the Internet.
RFC3734: Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) Transport Over
RFC3742: Limited Slow-Start for TCP with Large Congestion Windows.
RFC3782: The NewReno Modification to TCP's Fast Recovery Algorithm.
RFC3794: Survey of IPv4 Addresses in Currently Deployed IETF Transport Area Standards Track and Experimental Documents.
RFC3819: Advice for Internet Subnetwork Designers.
RFC3931: Layer Two Tunneling Protocol - Version 3 (L2TPv3).
RFC4015: The Eifel Response Algorithm for
RFC4138: Forward RTO-Recovery (F-RTO): An Algorithm for Detecting Spurious Retransmission Timeouts with TCP and the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP).
RFC4340: Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP).
RFC4341: Profile for Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) Congestion Control ID 2: TCP-like Congestion Control.
RFC4342: Profile for Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) Congestion Control ID 3: TCP-Friendly Rate Control (TFRC).
RFC4413: TCP/IP Field Behavior.
RFC4594: Configuration Guidelines for DiffServ Service Classes.
RFC4614: A Roadmap for Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) Specification Documents.
RFC4653: Improving the Robustness of TCP to Non-Congestion Events.
RFC4737: Packet Reordering Metrics.
RFC4774: Specifying Alternate Semantics for the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) Field.