New Stability Analysis of a Single Link TCP Vegas Model

This paper provides a new approach to analyze the stability of TCP Vegas, which is a kind of feedback-based congestion control algorithm. Whereas the conventional approaches use the approximately linearized model of the TCP Vegas along equilibrium points, this approach uses the exactly characterized dynamic model to get a new stability criterion via a piecewise and delay-dependent Lyapunov-Krasovskii function. Especially, the resulting stability criterion is formulated in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). Using the new criterion, this paper shows that the current TCP Vegas algorithm is stable in the sufficiently wide region of network delay and link capacity.