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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.12

No Signal to Rule Them All: A Systematic Analysis of In-Network Congestion Signals

Authors: Sarah McClure, Nandita Dukkipati, Sylvia Ratnasamy, and Scott Shenker

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 139, 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)

Abstract

In this paper, we address the following question: what in-network signals should a network provide to congestion control algorithms? To answer this guiding question, we use prior work to automatically generate congestion control algorithms optimized for a given performance objective and set of in-network congestion signals. We then make observations about the relative value of these congestion signals across a range of performance objectives. Our analysis yields a surprising central finding: for the average case, sophisticated In-Network Telemetry (INT) offers minimal performance benefits over traditional end-to-end (E2E) signals, with performance typically within 3%. We also find no single "best" INT signal, but rather a clear trade-off that manifests in many scenarios: link-based signals often excel at controlling delay, while queue-based signals are better for maximizing throughput. To make these findings concrete, we validate them by examining the extent to which in-network signals improve the performance of the BBR congestion control algorithm.

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Sarah McClure, Nandita Dukkipati, Sylvia Ratnasamy, and Scott Shenker. No Signal to Rule Them All: A Systematic Analysis of In-Network Congestion Signals. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 12:1-12:30, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{mcclure_et_al:OASIcs.NINeS.2026.12,
  author =	{McClure, Sarah and Dukkipati, Nandita and Ratnasamy, Sylvia and Shenker, Scott},
  title =	{{No Signal to Rule Them All: A Systematic Analysis of In-Network Congestion Signals}},
  booktitle =	{1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)},
  pages =	{12:1--12:30},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-414-7},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{139},
  editor =	{Argyraki, Katerina and Panda, Aurojit},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255974},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Congestion control, in-network telemetry}
}

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No Signal to Rule Them All: A Systematic Analysis of In-Network Congestion Signals

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