TCP Wave over Linux: A disruptive alternative to the traditional TCP window approach

Abstract TCP Wave relies on a disruptive communication paradigm based on bursts, to overcome limitations of legacy TCP with modern applications and challenging network scenarios. This protocol was already validated with appealing results via simulations. This work now presents its implementation in the Linux kernel, focusing on the adaptations needed to deal with real networking systems. A Linux implementation paves the way to validate the protocol algorithms and working principles on real communication environments, thus drawing its operational perimeter. In this regard, the most ambitious goal is to show the bright side of the burst transmission as a novel opportunity for performance optimization in the future Internet connectivity scenarios. TCP Wave performance is therefore compared with reference TCP congestion schemes currently included in the Linux kernel, namely BBR and Cubic, under a large set of network configurations. A vast gamut of performance indicators are presented and discussed, including throughput, latency, fairness, friendliness, loss management and reaction to network and traffic changes. Definitely, this paper is a manifest for the real TCP Wave implementation in Linux, which can act as reference for future works.