CUBIC: a new TCP-friendly high-speed TCP variant
Abstract
CUBIC is a congestion control protocol for TCP (transmission control protocol) and the current default TCP algorithm in Linux. The protocol modifies the linear window growth function of existing TCP standards to be a cubic function in order to improve the scalability of TCP over fast and long distance networks. It also achieves more equitable bandwidth allocations among flows with different RTTs (round trip times) by making the window growth to be independent of RTT -- thus those flows grow their congestion window at the same rate. During steady state, CUBIC increases the window size aggressively when the window is far from the saturation point, and the slowly when it is close to the saturation point. This feature allows CUBIC to be very scalable when the bandwidth and delay product of the network is large, and at the same time, be highly stable and also fair to standard TCP flows. The implementation of CUBIC in Linux has gone through several upgrades. This paper documents its design, implementation, performance and evolution as the default TCP algorithm of Linux.
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Several tests on simulated network topologies reveal that most generated RemyCCs provide a better balance between throughput and delay compared to standard TCP and its enhanced variants including TCP-Vegas, TCP-Cubic, and SFQ-CD.
“Several tests on simulated network topologies, such as cellular and data center networks, reveal that most of the generated RemyCCs provide a better balance between throughput and delay, in comparison to the standard TCP and its many enhanced variants, including TCP-Vegas, TCP-Cubic [174], and TCP-Cubic over Stochastic Fair Queuing [304] with Controlled-Delay AQM [340] (SFQ-CD).”
From A comprehensive survey on machine learning for networking: Evolution, applications and research opportunities (2018) · cites this paper as [174]
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- Authors
- Ha, S., Rhee, I., & Xu, L.
- Affiliations
- North Carolina State University (US)
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln (US)
- Venue
- ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review
- Published
- 2008-07
- Volume
- 42
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 64-74
- ISSN
- 0163-5980 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2022844530
- Cited by
- 2,287
- References
- 20
- Citations by year
- 2026: 108 · 2025: 153 · 2024: 152 · 2023: 148 · 2022: 140 · 2021: 177 · 2020: 133 · 2019: 162 · 2018: 141 · 2017: 110 · 2016: 126 · 2015: 107 · 2014: 108 · 2013: 128 · 2012: 113
- FWCI
- 147.28
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Network Traffic and Congestion Control
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Software-Defined Networks and 5G
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Networks and Communications › Wireless Networks and Protocols
- Keywords
- CUBIC, TCP congestion control, bandwidth-delay product, round-trip time
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