Congestion Control on DD-WRT using TCP Vegas.
In my previous article, we covered building a wireless home network using commodity hardware and DD-WRT. While it works great, you can definitely hit some snags when generating a lot of traffic, e.g. running BitTorrent, playing Black Ops, and trying to use your VoIP all at the same time. Everyone is given equal footing: that BitTorrent traffic might cause your VoIP call to drop and Black Ops to lag since it's eating up all of the bandwidth. QoS is fully supported by DD-WRT and could be used, but it's often difficult to configure, especially if you don't have a consistent up- and down-stream Internet speed. Enter the world of TCP Vegas:
Vegas is an implementation of TCP that achieves between 37 and 71% better throughput on the Internet, with onefifth to one-half the losses, as compared to the implementation of TCP in the Reno distribution of BSD Unix. This paper motivates and describes the three key techniques employed by Vegas, and presents the results of a comprehensive experimental performance study—using both simulations and measurements on the Internet—of the Vegas and Reno implementations of TCP.