1999/01/01 by J.C.R. Bennett, Craig Partridge, N. Shectman · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Network Traffic and Congestion Control #Software-Defined Networks and 5G #Internet Traffic Analysis and Secure E-voting #Computer science #Computer network #Network packet #Link state packet #Transmission Control Protocol #The Internet #Internet Protocol #Transmission delay #Router #Processing delay
paper · doi:10.1109/90.811445
openalex publication_date 1999/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
It is a widely held belief that packet reordering in the Internet is a pathological behavior, or more precisely, that it is an uncommon behavior caused by incorrect or malfunctioning network components. Some studies of Internet traffic have reported seeing occasional packet reordering events and ascribed these events to "route fluttering", router "pauses" or simply to broken equipment. We have found, however, that parallelism in Internet components and links is causing packet reordering under normal operation and that the incidence of packet reordering appears to be substantially higher than previously reported. More importantly, we observe that in the presence of massive packet reordering transmission control protocol (TCP) performance can be profoundly effected. Perhaps the most disturbing observation about TCP's behavior is that large scale and largely random reordering on the part of the network can lead to self-reinforcingly poor performance from TCP.