Public Review for Improving TCP Performance in Residential Broadband Networks: A Simple and Deployable Approach Maxim Podlesny and Carey Williamson This paper presents a new approach to a well-studied problem: poor TCP performance on asymmetric links. In presence of high asymmetry as with ADSL access lines, TCP is known to suffer in the upload direction when competing with the acknowledgements caused by the download. The key idea is to separate ACKs from data packets in the upload direction using two separate queues with different weights. This ensures protection for the data packets without overly penalizing ACKs. The authors then develop a model to set the weights of the two queues; their model assumes that all packets are acknowledged and sets as target the full utilization of the link for both ACKs and data packets. The mechanism is validated via ns2 simulations using a mix of long-lived and short-lived TCP connections as well as UDP traffic in both directions. The reviewers disagreed on the merits of the paper. One of the reviewers felt that the authors contribution was small compared to past work. In their rebuttal, however, the authors pointed out that their system requires nearly no configuration,
/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/improving-tcp-performance-in-residential-broadband-networks-a-simple-NixZRGEYdC