A survey on TCP Incast in data center networks

In high bandwidth, low latency data center networks, when multiple data senders simultaneously communicate with a single receiver, namely in many-to-one communication pattern, the burst data overload the receiver's switch buffers, which leads to Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) throughput collapse. This is the so-called TCP Incast problem. It has become a new hot research topic in recent years. Also, many proposals have been put forward from the aspects of multiple layers including link layer, transport layer, and application layer, etc., to mitigate TCP Incast. In this paper, an in-depth survey on these proposals is given, and the principles, merits, and drawbacks of the main proposals for solving the TCP Incast issue are analyzed and summarized. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.