2010/10/03 by Charles Shen, Henning Schulzrinne, Shen, Charles +1
Computer Science · Engineering · #C.2.1 #C.2.2 #C.2.3 #D.4.8 #FOS: Computer and information sciences #IPv6, Mobility, Handover, Networks, Security #K.6.2 #Network Traffic and Congestion Control #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Software-Defined Networks and 5G #cs.NI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1010.0376
IPTComm 2010
arxiv created 2010/10/03 · openalex publication_date 2010/10/03 · arxiv updated 2010/10/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) server overload management has attracted interest since SIP is being widely deployed in the Next Generation Networks (NGN) as a core signaling protocol. Yet all existing SIP overload control work is focused on SIP-over-UDP, despite the fact that TCP is increasingly seen as the more viable choice of SIP transport. This paper answers the following questions: is the existing TCP flow control capable of handling the SIP overload problem? If not, why and how can we make it work? We provide a comprehensive explanation of the default SIP-over-TCP overload behavior through server instrumentation. We also propose and implement novel but simple overload control algorithms without any kernel or protocol level modification. Experimental evaluation shows that with our mechanism the overload performance improves from its original zero throughput to nearly full capacity. Our work leads to the important general insight that the traditional notion of TCP flow control alone is incapable of managing overload for time-critical session-based applications, which would be applicable not only to SIP, but also to a wide range of other common applications such as database servers.