A new approach to model the stationary behavior of TCP connections

In this paper, we outline a methodology that can be applied to model the behavior of TCP flows. The proposed methodology stems from a Markovian model of a single TCP source, and eventually considers the superposition and interaction of several such sources using standard queueing analysis techniques. Our approach allows the evaluation of such performance indices as throughput, queueing delay and packet loss of TCP flows. The results obtained through our model are validated by means of simulation, under several topology and traffic settings.