Analytical computation of completion time distributions of short-lived TCP connections

A new technique for the analytical evaluation of distributions (and quantiles) of the completion time of short-lived TCP connections is presented and discussed. The proposed technique derives from known open multiclass queuing network (OMQN) models of the TCP protocol and computes a discrete approximation, with arbitrary accuracy, of the distribution of sojourn times of customers in the OMQN, which corresponds to the distribution of completion times of the modeled TCP connections. The proposed technique is computationally efficient, and its asymptotic complexity is independent of the network topology, of the number of concurrent flows, and of other network parameters. © 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.