CS 925 Advanced Computer Networks

Assignment 3


Due: Thursday, March 7, 2024, 2:10 pm (start of the class).

Problem:

Consider the following hypothesis: Intentional packet duplication at the source improves TCP throughput performance over links with high packet loss. Intuitively, packet duplication acts as a trivial form of forward error correction (FEC). Packet duplication should help in increasing the chance that a packet is delivered. The sequence numbers allow TCP to gracefully discard packet duplicates. Clearly, duplicating packets wastes network bandwidth. The first goal of the project is to find empirical evidence that the hypothesis is true. If it turns out to be true, the second goal of the project is to find more detailed conditions (e.g., loss rates, latency ranges, and the percentage of packets that need to get duplicated) under which the duplication results with better TCP throughput than with no duplication.

Deliverables:

Paper that describes your findings and code committed to the class repository.

Submission instructions:

Upload your submission as a single PDF file using Canvas (mycourses.unh.edu). Any source code used in the assignment must be committed to the course Git repository. More details can be found in the standard assignment submission instructions.