A competitive analysis for retransmission timeout Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Protocols that provide reliable communication on top of a network that can lose packets rely on periodically retransmitting packets. The choice of retransmission timeout critically affects system performance. This paper presents a first step toward a theoretical study of the choice of retransmission timeout, based on competitive analysis. In general, competitive analysis compares the performance of an on-line algorithm to the performance of an optimal off-line algorithm, which has access to more information. In this context, the job of an algorithm is to choose the retransmission timeout interval; an off-line algorithm knows the exact message delays, whereas an on-line algorithm knows only upper and lower bounds on the delays. The performance measure of interest is the expected value of a linear combination of the number of packets used and the amount of time elapsed. An on-line algorithm for choosing the retransmission timeout is presented that is optimal with respect to the difference between its performance and that of an optimal off-line algorithm. The algorithm is also analyzed with respect to the ratio of its performance and that of an optimal off-line algorithm. 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Networks 34: 73-80, 1999.

published proceedings

  • NETWORKS

author list (cited authors)

  • Dolev, S., Kate, M., & Welch, J. L.

citation count

  • 0

complete list of authors

  • Dolev, S||Kate, M||Welch, JL

publication date

  • August 1999

publisher