US 8,570,864 B2 · Kernel awareness of physical environment

Abstract

Described are techniques to use adaptive learning to control bandwidth or rate of transmission of a computer on a network. Congestion observations such as packet delay and packet loss are used to compute a congestion signal. The congestion signal is correlated with information about actual congestion on the network, and the transmission rate is adjusted according to the degree of correlation. Transmission rate may not adjust when packet delay or packet loss is not strongly correlated with actual congestion. The congestion signal is adaptively learned. For instance, the relative effects of loss and delay on the congestion signal may change over time. Moreover, an operating congestion level may be minimized by adaptive adjustment.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A method performed by a transmitting computer that originally transmits over a network comprised of links to receiving computers, the method comprising:

transmitting packets over the network to destination computers, wherein the transmitting is performed at a transmitting rate that changes over time;
obtaining network observations that at times indicate congestion of a portion of the network carrying packets transmitted by the transmitting computer;
and
changing the transmitting rate of the transmitting computer by correlating the network observations with previous rates of transmission of the transmitting computer, wherein a congestion level signal is computed based on the network observations, and wherein the changing is performed such that an amount of rate adaptation is proportional to a computed degree of correlation between the congestion level signal and computed actual congestion, and wherein an operating congestion level used for changing the transmitting rate corresponds to a rate of transmission at or above which transmitted packets will experience observable loss and/or delay as a result of congestion of the portion of the network.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Kernel awareness of physical environment

Life of this patent

Kernel awareness of physical environment

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims17