Network schemes for TCP elastic traffic in the Internet

TCP elastic traffic is generated by the traditional “data” applications in the Internet, such as web browsing, peer-to-peer file sharing, ftp, e-mail and other. These applications are built on top of TCP, which provides reliable transfers and adjusts the sending rate to the network conditions to achieve the maximum possible throughput, a feature that makes TCP flows to be called “elastic”. From the point of view of the network, TCP elastic traffic requires the maximum possible throughput above a minimum value, a network service that we call the Minimum Throughput Service (MTS). In this paper we survey the main network schemes that have been proposed in the Internet to provide this service for TCP elastic traffic, classified in two broad groups, the ones that do not use Admission Control (AC) and the ones that do use it. For each network scheme we describe the main characteristics of the service (whether the minimum throughput can be different or is the same for all flows, whether isolation among flows is provided, etc.) and their architecture (the specific traffic conditioning, queue disciplines and AC mechanisms used, the required state, the use of signaling, etc.).