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Revisiting the Gentle Parameter of the Random Early Detection (RED) for TCP Congestion Control

Nabhan Hamadneh 1, Mouhammd Al-Kasassbeh 2, Ibrahim Obiedat1, Mustafa BaniKhalaf3
1. Hashemite University, Zarqa 13133, Jordan
2. Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Amman 11941, Jordan
3. Yarmouk University, Irbid 21163, Jordan

Abstract—The Random Early Detection (RED) is used as an Active Queue Management (AQM) Technique for TCP congestion handling. A modification of RED called the Gentle RED (GRED) has been proposed by adding the Gentle parameter to the original implementation of RED. This parameter has been turned on by default in the NS2 simulator versions 2.1b and later; claiming that it helps in smoothing out traffic in routers and increases network performance. In this article we revisit this parameter and show, through simulation, that this parameter should be turned off in current simulations of RED using the NS2 simulator and it should be replaced by any adaptation parameter such as the Adaptive parameter in ARED.


Index Terms—RED, TCP, Gentle-RED, AQM, NS2.

Cite: Nabhan Hamadneh, Mouhammd Al-Kasassbeh, Ibrahim Obiedat, Mustafa BaniKhalaf, " Revisiting the Gentle Parameter of the Random Early Detection (RED) for TCP Congestion Control," Journal of Communications, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 229-235, 2019. Doi: 10.12720/jcm.14.3.229-235.