Router Buffer Re-Sizing for Short-Lived TCP Flows

Traditionally, the size of router buffers is determined by the bandwidth-delay product discipline (normal discipline), which is the product of the link bandwidth and average Round-Trip Time (RTT) of flows passing through the router. However, recent research results have revealed that when the number of flows is sufficiently large, the buffer size can be decreased to the bandwidth-delay product divided by the square-root of the number of flows (sqrtN discipline), without introducing under-utilization of the link bandwidth. This assertion has been verified mainly for long-lived flows; in contrast, there has not been a thorough verification of short-lived flows, which are the majority of Internet flows.