UDT: A high performance data transport protocol.

摘要

This dissertation proposes a new data transport protocol for bulk data transfer over high-speed wide area networks. This new protocol is called UDT, or UDP-based Data Transfer Protocol. Through extensive simulations and real world experiments, this dissertation shows that UDT satisfies both the objectives of efficiency and fairness (including intra-protocol fairness, RTT fairness, and TCP friendliness). UDT can support data transfer at very high speeds (e.g., 1Gb/s and above) with a single flow while sharing the network resources fairly with concurrent flows. This is not feasible by using existing Internet data transport protocols (e.g., TCP). UDT can be used in the emerging distributed data intensive applications such as grid computing, where a small number of data flows share the abundant optical network bandwidth. UDT is at the application level and it is easy to deploy without the need for administrative privileges.; There are two highly related but orthogonal elements in the work presented by this dissertation: the UDT protocol and its congestion control algorithm. UDT is an application level, end-to-end, unicast, reliable, connection-oriented streaming data transport protocol. The protocol is specially designed for efficient high-speed data transfer. In addition, the UDT protocol is designed to be able to accommodate a large variety of control algorithms such that it can also be used as a protocol framework for the implementation and evaluation of new control algorithms. Finally, UDT's default congestion control algorithm enables UDT to be used in shared network environments while realizing high throughput. This dissertation will introduce the design, implementation, and evaluation of the UDT protocol and its congestion control algorithm.