Van Jacobson

Bio: Van Jacobson is an academic researcher from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The author has contributed to research in topics: Multicast & IP multicast. The author has an hindex of 42, co-authored 66 publications receiving 41742 citations. Previous affiliations of Van Jacobson include PARC & University of California, Los Angeles.

RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications

Abstract: This memorandum describes RTP, the real-time transport protocol. RTP provides end-to-end network transport functions suitable for applications transmitting real-time data, such as audio, video or simulation data, over multicast or unicast network services. RTP does not address resource reservation and does not guarantee quality-of-service for real-time services. The data transport is augmented by a control protocol (RTCP) to allow monitoring of the data delivery in a manner scalable to large multicast networks, and to provide minimal control and identification functionality. RTP and RTCP are designed to be independent of the underlying transport and network layers. The protocol supports the use of RTP-level translators and mixers.

Random early detection gateways for congestion avoidance

Abstract: The authors present random early detection (RED) gateways for congestion avoidance in packet-switched networks. The gateway detects incipient congestion by computing the average queue size. The gateway could notify connections of congestion either by dropping packets arriving at the gateway or by setting a bit in packet headers. When the average queue size exceeds a present threshold, the gateway drops or marks each arriving packet with a certain probability, where the exact probability is a function of the average queue size. RED gateways keep the average queue size low while allowing occasional bursts of packets in the queue. During congestion, the probability that the gateway notifies a particular connection to reduce its window is roughly proportional to that connection's share of the bandwidth through the gateway. RED gateways are designed to accompany a transport-layer congestion control protocol such as TCP. The RED gateway has no bias against bursty traffic and avoids the global synchronization of many connections decreasing their window at the same time. Simulations of a TCP/IP network are used to illustrate the performance of RED gateways. >

Congestion avoidance and control

Abstract: In October of '86, the Internet had the first of what became a series of 'congestion collapses'. During this period, the data throughput from LBL to UC Berkeley (sites separated by 400 yards and three IMP hops) dropped from 32 Kbps to 40 bps. Mike Karels1 and I were fascinated by this sudden factor-of-thousand drop in bandwidth and embarked on an investigation of why things had gotten so bad. We wondered, in particular, if the 4.3BSD (Berkeley UNIX) TCP was mis-behaving or if it could be tuned to work better under abysmal network conditions. The answer to both of these questions was “yes”.Since that time, we have put seven new algorithms into the 4BSD TCP: round-trip-time variance estimationexponential retransmit timer backoffslow-startmore aggressive receiver ack policydynamic window sizing on congestionKarn's clamped retransmit backofffast retransmit Our measurements and the reports of beta testers suggest that the final product is fairly good at dealing with congested conditions on the Internet.This paper is a brief description of (i) - (v) and the rationale behind them. (vi) is an algorithm recently developed by Phil Karn of Bell Communications Research, described in [KP87]. (viii) is described in a soon-to-be-published RFC.Algorithms (i) - (v) spring from one observation: The flow on a TCP connection (or ISO TP-4 or Xerox NS SPP connection) should obey a 'conservation of packets' principle. And, if this principle were obeyed, congestion collapse would become the exception rather than the rule. Thus congestion control involves finding places that violate conservation and fixing them.By 'conservation of packets' I mean that for a connection 'in equilibrium', i.e., running stably with a full window of data in transit, the packet flow is what a physicist would call 'conservative': A new packet isn't put into the network until an old packet leaves. The physics of flow predicts that systems with this property should be robust in the face of congestion. Observation of the Internet suggests that it was not particularly robust. Why the discrepancy?There are only three ways for packet conservation to fail: The connection doesn't get to equilibrium, orA sender injects a new packet before an old packet has exited, orThe equilibrium can't be reached because of resource limits along the path. In the following sections, we treat each of these in turn.

Named data networking

Abstract: Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of five projects funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation under its Future Internet Architecture Program. NDN has its roots in an earlier project, Content-Centric Networking (CCN), which Van Jacobson first publicly presented in 2006. The NDN project investigates Jacobson's proposed evolution from today's host-centric network architecture (IP) to a data-centric network architecture (NDN). This conceptually simple shift has far-reaching implications for how we design, develop, deploy, and use networks and applications. We describe the motivation and vision of this new architecture, and its basic components and operations. We also provide a snapshot of its current design, development status, and research challenges. More information about the project, including prototype implementations, publications, and annual reports, is available on named-data.net.

SDP: Session Description Protocol

Abstract: This document defines the Session Description Protocol, SDP. SDP is intended for describing multimedia sessions for the purposes of session announcement, session invitation, and other forms of multimedia session initiation.

Chord: A scalable peer-to-peer lookup service for internet applications

Abstract: A fundamental problem that confronts peer-to-peer applications is to efficiently locate the node that stores a particular data item. This paper presents Chord, a distributed lookup protocol that addresses this problem. Chord provides support for just one operation: given a key, it maps the key onto a node. Data location can be easily implemented on top of Chord by associating a key with each data item, and storing the key/data item pair at the node to which the key maps. Chord adapts efficiently as nodes join and leave the system, and can answer queries even if the system is continuously changing. Results from theoretical analysis, simulations, and experiments show that Chord is scalable, with communication cost and the state maintained by each node scaling logarithmically with the number of Chord nodes.

GPSR: greedy perimeter stateless routing for wireless networks

Abstract: We present Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR), a novel routing protocol for wireless datagram networks that uses the positions of routers and a packet's destination to make packet forwarding decisions. GPSR makes greedy forwarding decisions using only information about a router's immediate neighbors in the network topology. When a packet reaches a region where greedy forwarding is impossible, the algorithm recovers by routing around the perimeter of the region. By keeping state only about the local topology, GPSR scales better in per-router state than shortest-path and ad-hoc routing protocols as the number of network destinations increases. Under mobility's frequent topology changes, GPSR can use local topology information to find correct new routes quickly. We describe the GPSR protocol, and use extensive simulation of mobile wireless networks to compare its performance with that of Dynamic Source Routing. Our simulations demonstrate GPSR's scalability on densely deployed wireless networks.

RTP: A Transport Protocol for Real-Time Applications

Abstract: This memorandum describes RTP, the real-time transport protocol. RTP provides end-to-end network transport functions suitable for applications transmitting real-time data, such as audio, video or simulation data, over multicast or unicast network services. RTP does not address resource reservation and does not guarantee quality-of-service for real-time services. The data transport is augmented by a control protocol (RTCP) to allow monitoring of the data delivery in a manner scalable to large multicast networks, and to provide minimal control and identification functionality. RTP and RTCP are designed to be independent of the underlying transport and network layers. The protocol supports the use of RTP-level translators and mixers.

A scalable content-addressable network

Abstract: Hash tables - which map "keys" onto "values" - are an essential building block in modern software systems. We believe a similar functionality would be equally valuable to large distributed systems. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a Content-Addressable Network (CAN) as a distributed infrastructure that provides hash table-like functionality on Internet-like scales. The CAN is scalable, fault-tolerant and completely self-organizing, and we demonstrate its scalability, robustness and low-latency properties through simulation.

Random early detection gateways for congestion avoidance

Abstract: The authors present random early detection (RED) gateways for congestion avoidance in packet-switched networks. The gateway detects incipient congestion by computing the average queue size. The gateway could notify connections of congestion either by dropping packets arriving at the gateway or by setting a bit in packet headers. When the average queue size exceeds a present threshold, the gateway drops or marks each arriving packet with a certain probability, where the exact probability is a function of the average queue size. RED gateways keep the average queue size low while allowing occasional bursts of packets in the queue. During congestion, the probability that the gateway notifies a particular connection to reduce its window is roughly proportional to that connection's share of the bandwidth through the gateway. RED gateways are designed to accompany a transport-layer congestion control protocol such as TCP. The RED gateway has no bias against bursty traffic and avoids the global synchronization of many connections decreasing their window at the same time. Simulations of a TCP/IP network are used to illustrate the performance of RED gateways. >