TCP Congestion Control

1999/04/01 by Mark Allman, Vern Paxson, W. Stevens · 4 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · #Network Traffic and Congestion Control #Software-Defined Networks and 5G #Advanced Optical Network Technologies #Idle #TCP Westwood plus #Slow-start #Network congestion #Computer science #TCP tuning #Computer network #TCP Friendly Rate Control #Transmission Control Protocol #Control (management) #Operating system #Network packet #Artificial intelligence

paper · doi:10.17487/rfc2581

openalex publication_date 1999/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/21

Abstract

This document defines TCP's four intertwined congestion control algorithms: slow start, congestion avoidance, fast retransmit, and fast recovery. In addition, the document specifies how TCP should begin transmission after a relatively long idle period, as well as discussing various acknowledgment generation methods. This document obsoletes RFC 2581.

Citations

• Simulation-based comparisons of Tahoe, Reno and SACK TCP
• Random early detection gateways for congestion avoidance
• TCP Slow Start, Congestion Avoidance, Fast Retransmit, and Fast Recovery Algorithms

Cited by

• Flow Splitting with Fate Sharing in a Next Generation Transport Services Architecture
• D-TCP: Dynamic TCP congestion control algorithm for next generation mobile networks
• Host-to-Host Congestion Control for TCP
• TCP congestion control [wikipedia]