A study of active queue management for congestion control

In this work, we investigate mechanisms for Internet congestion control in general, and random early detection (RED) in particular. We first study the current proposals for RED implementation and identify several structural problems such as producing large traffic oscillations and introducing unnecessary overhead in the fast path forwarding. We model RED as a feedback control system and discover fundamental laws governing the traffic dynamics in TCP/IP networks. Based on this understanding, we derive a set of recommendations for the architecture and implementation of congestion control modules in routers, such as RED.