It's Time to Replace TCP in the Datacenter
Networking and Internet Architecture
2023-01-20 v2
Abstract
In spite of its long and successful history, TCP is a poor transport protocol for modern datacenters. Every significant element of TCP, from its stream orientation to its expectation of in-order packet delivery, is wrong for the datacenter. It is time to recognize that TCP's problems are too fundamental and interrelated to be fixed; the only way to harness the full performance potential of modern networks is to introduce a new transport protocol into the datacenter. Homa demonstrates that it is possible to create a transport protocol that avoids all of TCP's problems. Although Homa is not API-compatible with TCP, it should be possible to bring it into widespread usage by integrating it with RPC frameworks.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2210.00714,
title = {It's Time to Replace TCP in the Datacenter},
author = {John Ousterhout},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.00714},
year = {2023}
}