Performance comparison between ECN and BECN

There have been some concerns and doubts impeding the adoption of backward-ECN since it was proposed as an alternative approach to ECN (explicit congestion notification). In this paper, we attempt to clarify these controversial issues through a performance comparison between these two schemes. A simple steady state model is developed to reveal the throughput characterization of our revised BECN scheme. Simulation results are presented to provide operational evidence to weigh the benefits that BECN brings in terms of goodput and other metrics. Our studies indicate that BECN exhibits a better congestion control behaviour than ECN under the investigated high speed network circumstance. The results also show that ICMP (Internet control message protocol) source quench in conjunction with the RED (random early detection) marking algorithm appears a practical and efficient congestion notification solution to BECN.