[Bloat] [e2e] bufferbloat paper

Tue Jan 8 08:19:41 EST 2013

OK...

Likely means that AQM is not turned on in the eNodeB, can't be 100% sure though but it seems so.
At least one company I know of  offers AQM in eNodeB. However one problem seems to be that the only thing that counts is peak throughput, you have probably too seen these "up to X Mbps" slogans.  Competition is fierce snd for this reason it could be tempting to turn off AQM as it may reduce peak throughput slightly. I know and most people on these mailing lists knows that peak throughput is the "mexapixels" of the internet, one need to address other aspects in the benchmarks.

/Ingemar

> -----Original Message-----
> From: winstein at gmail.com [mailto:winstein at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Keith
> Winstein
> Sent: den 8 januari 2013 13:44
> To: Ingemar Johansson S
> Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org; bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net;
> mallman at icir.org
> Subject: Re: [e2e] bufferbloat paper
> 
> Hello Ingemar,
> 
> Thanks for your feedback and your own graph.
> 
> This is testing the LTE downlink, not the uplink. It was a TCP download.
> 
> There was zero packet loss on the ICMP pings. I did not measure the TCP
> flow itself but I suspect packet loss was minimal if not also zero.
> 
> Best,
> Keith
> 
> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 7:19 AM, Ingemar Johansson S
> <ingemar.s.johansson at ericsson.com> wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > Interesting graph, thanks for sharing it.
> > It is likely that the delay is only limited by TCPs maximum congestion
> window, for instance at T=70 the thoughput is ~15Mbps and the RTT~0.8s,
> giving a congestion window of 1.5e7/8/0.8 = 2343750 bytes, recalculations at
> other time instants seems to give a similar figure.
> > Do you see any packet loss ?
> >
> > The easiest way to mitigate bufferbloat in LTE UL is AQM in the terminal as
> the packets are buffered there.
> > The eNodeB does not buffer up packets in UL* so I would in this particular
> case argue that the problem is best solved in the terminal.
> > Implementing AQM for UL in eNodeB is probably doable but AFAIK nothing
> that is standardized also I cannot tell how feasible it is.
> >
> > /Ingemar
> >
> > BTW... UL = uplink
> > * RLC-AM retransmissions can be said to cause delay in the eNodeB but
> then again the main problem is that packets are being queued up in the
> terminals sendbuffer. The MAC layer HARQ can too cause some delay but
> this is a necessity to get an optimal performance for LTE, moreover the
> added delay due to HARQ reTx is marginal in this context.
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: winstein at gmail.com [mailto:winstein at gmail.com] On Behalf Of
> >> Keith Winstein
> >> Sent: den 8 januari 2013 11:42
> >> To: Ingemar Johansson S
> >> Cc: end2end-interest at postel.org; bloat at lists.bufferbloat.net;
> >> mallman at icir.org
> >> Subject: Re: [e2e] bufferbloat paper
> >>
> >> I'm sorry to report that the problem is not (in practice) better on
> >> LTE, even though the standard may support features that could be used
> >> to mitigate the problem.
> >>
> >> Here is a plot (also at
> >> http://web.mit.edu/keithw/www/verizondown.png)
> >> from a computer tethered to a Samsung Galaxy Nexus running Android
> >> 4.0.4 on Verizon LTE service, taken just now in Cambridge, Mass.
> >>
> >> The phone was stationary during the test and had four bars (a full
> >> signal) of "4G" service. The computer ran a single full-throttle TCP
> >> CUBIC download from one well-connected but unremarkable Linux host
> >> (ssh hostname 'cat /dev/urandom') while pinging at 4 Hz across the
> >> same tethered LTE interface. There were zero lost pings during the
> >> entire test
> >> (606/606 delivered).
> >>
> >> The RTT grows to 1-2 seconds and stays stable in that region for most
> >> of the test, except for one 12-second period of >5 seconds RTT. We
> >> have also tried measuring only "one-way delay" (instead of RTT) by
> >> sending UDP datagrams out of the computer's Ethernet interface over
> >> the Internet, over LTE to the cell phone and back to the originating
> >> computer via USB tethering. This gives similar results to ICMP ping.
> >>
> >> I don't doubt that the carriers could implement reasonable AQM or
> >> even a smaller buffer at the head-end, or that the phone could
> >> implement AQM for the uplink. For that matter I'm not sure the details of
> the air interface (LTE vs.
> >> UMTS vs. 1xEV-DO) necessarily makes a difference here.
> >>
> >> But at present, at least with AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile in
> >> Eastern Massachusetts, the carrier is willing to queue and hold on to
> >> packets for >1 second. Even a single long-running TCP download (>15
> >> megabytes) is enough to tickle this problem.
> >>
> >> In the CCR paper, even flows >1 megabyte were almost nonexistent,
> >> which may be part of how these findings are compatible.
> >>
> >> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:35 AM, Ingemar Johansson S
> >> <ingemar.s.johansson at ericsson.com> wrote:
> >> > Hi
> >> >
> >> > Include Mark's original post (below) as it was scrubbed
> >> >
> >> > I don't have an data of bufferbloat for wireline access and the
> >> > fiber
> >> connection that I have at home shows little evidence of bufferbloat.
> >> >
> >> > Wireless access seems to be a different story though.
> >> > After reading the "Tackling Bufferbloat in 3G/4G Mobile Networks"
> >> > by Jiang et al. I decided to make a few measurements of my own
> >> > (hope that the attached png is not removed)
> >> >
> >> > The measurement setup was quite simple, a Laptop with Ubuntu 12.04
> >> with a 3G modem attached.
> >> > The throughput was computed from the wireshark logs and RTT was
> >> measured with ping (towards a webserver hosted by Akamai). The
> >> location is Luleå city centre, Sweden (fixed locations) and the
> >> measurement was made at lunchtime on Dec 6 2012 .
> >> >
> >> > During the measurement session I did some close to normal websurf,
> >> including watching embedded videoclips and youtube. In some cases the
> >> effects of bufferbloat was clearly noticeable.
> >> > Admit that this is just one sample, a more elaborate study with
> >> > more
> >> samples would be interesting to see.
> >> >
> >> > 3G has the interesting feature that packets are very seldom lost in
> >> downlink (data going to the terminal). I did not see a single packet
> >> loss in this test!. I wont elaborate on the reasons in this email.
> >> > I would however believe that LTE is better off in this respect as
> >> > long as
> >> AQM is implemented, mainly because LTE is a packet-switched
> architecture.
> >> >
> >> > /Ingemar
> >> >
> >> > Marks post.
> >> > ********
> >> > [I tried to post this in a couple places to ensure I hit folks who
> >> > would  be interested.  If you end up with multiple copies of the
> >> > email, my  apologies.  --allman]
> >> >
> >> > I know bufferbloat has been an interest of lots of folks recently.
> >> > So, I thought I'd flog a recent paper that presents a little data
> >> > on the topic ...
> >> >
> >> >     Mark Allman.  Comments on Bufferbloat, ACM SIGCOMM Computer
> >> >     Communication Review, 43(1), January 2013.
> >> >     http://www.icir.org/mallman/papers/bufferbloat-ccr13.pdf
> >> >
> >> > Its an initial paper.  I think more data would be great!
> >> >
> >> > allman
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > --
> >> > http://www.icir.org/mallman/
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >