Call for Papers
Despite lots of discussion in academia and industry, there isn’t consensus about how big a router buffer should be. Originally, we had the rule of thumb that the buffer should equal the bandwidth-delay product, but many networks no longer follow this guideline. Choosing a buffer size is inherently complicated: It depends on (at least) the congestion control algorithm, AQM (marking and dropping policies), load-balancing, traffic engineering and the applications generating the traffic. So far, there has been some measurement and theory, but little consensus.
The goal of this workshop is to improve our understanding of how to pick buffer sizes in different parts of the network (e.g. DC, WAN, last mile, WiFi, cellular), for different applications (video, HPC, Hadoop-like, financial) and for different congestion control algorithms. Ideally, we would like to establish, from a mix of theoretical and experimental results, guidelines that can be used in practice to size routers’ buffers, and provide guidance to semiconductor and equipment providers.
We solicit contributions in the following areas:
- Experiments and theory.
- Industry measurement performed on operational networks, in production conditions.
- Experiences at transit ISPs, content provider, cellular networks.
- Studies of the relationship between buffer sizing and congestion control, particularly for new congestion control algorithms.
- A/B testing of different influential parameters.
- Impact of buffer sizing on application performance.
- Impact of application design on buffer size requirements.
We accept two types of contribution: (1) a 4-6 page paper, possibly pointing to some additional online material, or (2) a 2 page proposal for a talk or for an experience report. Please use the SIGCOMM style file for LaTeX submissions, and equivalent formatting for non-LaTeX submissions. Reviewing will be single blind, please include author names on the submitted paper.
Contributions will be reviewed to verify the technical correctness of the material presented in the paper. The authors of accepted papers and proposals will be invited to give a talk at the workshop in December, at Stanford University. Accepted papers will be posted online, and technical papers which are at least 5 pages will be posted to the ACM Digital Library.
Important dates:
- NOW: notify us with your interest to submit or perform an experiment
- Register paper or talk proposal (submission site): Before October 15th at 11.59pm Pacific Time.
- Submit 4-6 page paper or 2 page proposal (submission site): Before October 22nd at 11.59pm Pacific Time.
- TPC decision: November 5th.
- Final version of paper due: November 22nd.
- Workshop presentations: December 2nd and 3rd.
Note: To help make the workshop fruitful, the workshop material will be made available online a week before the event. Attendees who do not have a presentation will be asked to explain their motivation for attending in 2 sentences.
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