Characterization and Evaluation of TCP and UDP-based Transport on Real Networks

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Characterization and Evaluation of TCP and
UDP-based Transport on Real Networks

• Les Cottrell, Saad Ansari, Parakram Khandpur,
  Ruchi Gupta, Richard Hughes-Jones, Michael Chen,
  Larry McIntosh, Frank Leers
• SLAC, Manchester University, Chelsio and Sun
• Site visit to SLAC by DoE program managers Thomas
  Ndousse Mary Anne Scott
• April 27, 2005
• www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/talk05/tcp-apr05
  .ppt

Partially funded by DOE/MICS Field Work Proposal
on Internet End-to-end Performance Monitoring
(IEPM), also supported by IUPAP
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Project goals

• Evaluate various techniques for achieving high
  bulk-throughput on fast long-distance real
  production WAN links
• Compare contrast ease of configuration,
  throughput, convergence, fairness, stability etc.
• For different RTTs
• Recommend optimum techniques for data intensive
  science (BaBar) transfers using bbftp, bbcp,
  GridFTP
• Validate simulator emulator findings provide
  feedback

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Techniques rejected

• Jumbo frames
• Not an IEEE standard
• May break some UDP applications
• Not supported on SLAC LAN
• Sender mods only, HENP model is few big senders,
  lots of smaller receivers
• Simplifies deployment, only a few hosts at a few
  sending sites
• So no Dynamic Right Sizing (DRS)
• Runs on production nets
• No router mods (XCP/ECN)

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Software Transports

• Advanced TCP stacks
• To overcome AIMD congestion behavior of Reno
  based TCPs
• BUT
• SLAC datamover are all based on Solaris, while
  advanced TCPs currently are Linux only
• SLAC production systems people concerned about
  non-standard kernels, ensuring TCP patches keep
  current with security patches for SLAC supported
  Linux version
• So also very interested in transport that runs in
  user space (no kernel mods)
• Evaluate UDT from UIC folks

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Hardware Assists

• For 1Gbits/s paths, cpu, bus etc. not a problem
• For 10Gbits/s they are more important
• NIC assistance to the CPU is becoming popular
• Checksum offload
• Interrupt coalescence
• Large send/receive ofload (LSO/LRO)
• TCP Offload Engine (TOE)
• Several vendors for 10Gbits/s NICs, at least one
  for 1Gbits/s NIC
• But currently restricts to using NIC vendors TCP
  implementation
• Most focus is on the LAN
• Cheap alternative to Infiniband, MyriNet etc.

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Protocols Evaluated

• TCP (implementations as of April 2004)
• Linux 2.4 New Reno with SACK single and parallel
  streams (Reno)
• Scalable TCP (Scalable)
• Fast TCP
• HighSpeed TCP (HSTCP)
• HighSpeed TCP Low Priority (HSTCP-LP)
• Binary Increase Control TCP (BICTCP)
• Hamilton TCP (HTCP)
• Layering TCP (LTCP)
• UDP
• UDT v2.

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Methodology (1Gbit/s)

• Chose 3 paths from SLAC
• Caltech (10ms), Univ Florida (80ms), CERN (180ms)
• Used iperf/TCP and UDT/UDP to generate traffic
• Each run was 16 minutes, in 7 regions

SLAC
bottleneck
Caltech/UFL/CERN
TCP/UDP
Iperf or UDT
Ping 1/s
iperf
ICMP/ping traffic
4 mins
2 mins
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Behavior Indicators

• Achievable throughput
• Stability S s/µ (standard deviation/average)
• Intra-protocol fairness F

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Behavior wrt RTT

• 10ms (Caltech) Throughput, Stability (small is
  good), Fairness minimum (over regions 2 thru 6)
  (closer to 1 is better)
• Excl. FAST 72064Mbps, S0.180.04, F0.95
• FAST 400120Mbps, S0.33, F0.88
• 80ms (U. Florida) Throughput, Stability
• All 350103Mbps, S0.30.12, F0.82
• 180ms (CERN)
• All 340130Mbps, S0.420.17, F0.81
• The Stability and Fairness effects are more
  manifest on longer RTT, so focus on CERN

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Reno single stream

• Low performance on fast long distance paths
• AIMD (add a1 pkt to cwnd / RTT, decrease cwnd by
  factor b0.5 in congestion)
• Net effect recovers slowly, does not effectively
  use available bandwidth, so poor throughput
• Remaining flows do not take up slack when flow
  removed

Multiple streams increase recovery rate
Congestion has a dramatic effect
SLAC to CERN
Recovery is slow
RTT increases when achieves best throughput
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Fast

• Also uses RTT to detect congestion
• RTT is very stable s(RTT) 9ms vs 370.14ms for
  the others

2nd flow never gets equal share of bandwidth
Big drops in throughput which take several
seconds to recover from
SLAC-CERN
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HTCP

• One of the best performers
• Throughput is high
• Big effects on RTT when achieves best throughput
• Flows share equally

Appears to need gt1 flow to achieve best
throughput
Two flows share equally
SLAC-CERN
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BICTCP

• Needs gt 1 flow for best throughput

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UDTv2

• Similar behavior to better TCP stacks
• RTT very variable at best throughputs
• Intra-protocol sharing is good
• Behaves well as flows add subtract

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Overall
Proto Avg thru (Mbps) S (s/µ) min (F) s (RTT) MHz/ Mbps
Scal. 423115 0.27 0.83 22 0.64
BIC 412117 0.28 0.98 55 0.71
HTCP 402113 0.28 0.99 57 0.65
UDT 390136 0.35 0.95 49 1.2
LTCP 376137 0.36 0.56 41 0.67
Fast 335110 0.33 0.58 9 0.66
HSTCP 255187 0.73 0.79 25 0.9
Reno 248163 0.66 0.6 22 0.63
HSTCP-LP 228114 0.5 0.64 33 0.65
Scalable is one of best, but inter-protocol is
poor (see Bullot et al.) BIC HTCP are about
equal UDT is close, BUT cpu intensive (used to be
much (factor of 10) worse) Fast gives low RTT
values variability All TCP protocols use
similar cpu (HSTCP looks poor because throughput
low)
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Conclusions

• Need testing on real networks
• Controlled simulation emulation critical for
  understanding
• BUT ALSO need to verify, and results look
  different than expected (e.g. Fast)
• Most important for transoceanic paths
• UDT looks promising
• Need to evaluate various offloads (TOE, LSO ...)
• Need to repeat inter-protocol fairness vs Reno
• More implementations emerging (Westwood), and
  improvements to existing
• Test at 10Gbps

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Further Information

• Web site with lots of plots analysis
• www.slac.stanford.edu/grp/scs/net/papers/pfld05/ru
  chig/Fairness/
• Inter-protocols comparison (Journal of Grid Comp,
  PFLD04)
• www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap/getdoc/slac-pub-104
  02.pdf
• SC2004 details
• www-iepm.slac.stanford.edu/monitoring/bulk/sc2004/