Compound Ideas

The paper A Compound TCP Approach for High-speed and Long Distance Networks describes a novel TCP algorithm to utilize high speed and long-delay networks more efficiently while maintaining inter- and intra-protocol fairness. For me, the most interesting part of the paper is the build-up from the "previous work" section to the section describing the new algorithm itself. Through the two sections one learns that the paper's novel contribution is simply the combination of existing ideas in new ways. More specifically, compound TCP basically combines HSTCP, an aggressive loss-based congestion control algorithm, with delay-based information very similar to that used by the Vegas and Fast TCP algorithms. Even more interestingly, CTCP isn't even the first to combine the two approaches; TCP Africa also attempted a similar strategy. Yet, despite the apparent simplicity of CTCP relative to previous work, it apparently improved on existing approaches enough to become a standard available option new versions of windows. To me, this paper serves an excellent example of incremental evolution in the research community.