Alibaba Group Holding Limited
System and method for congestion control using time difference congestion notification

Abstract:

A system is provided for controlling congestion. The system sends a first data packet to a destination device, and receives a first acknowledgement packet from the destination device corresponding to the first data packet. Next, the system can extract, from the first acknowledgement packet, a first pair of timestamp values which includes a first time stamp value generated by the source device and a second timestamp value generated by the destination device, and further extract, from a second acknowledgement packet corresponding to a subsequently transmitted packet to the destination device, a second pair of time stamp values which include a third time stamp value generated by the source device and a fourth time stamp value generated by the destination device. The system can determine the congestion change by calculating a one-way travel time difference based on the first pair of timestamp values with the second pair of timestamp values.