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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.8

Contracts: A Unified Lens on Congestion Control Robustness, Fairness, Congestion, and Generality

Authors: Anup Agarwal, Venkat Arun, and Srinivasan Seshan

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

Abstract

Congestion control algorithms (CCAs) operate in partially observable environments. They cannot directly observe link capacities or competing flows. To share network resources fairly, CCAs (implicitly) communicate fair shares through observable signals. For instance, Reno encodes the fair share as ∝ 1/√{loss rate}. We call such communication mechanisms as contracts. We find that the choice of contract fixes key steady-state performance metrics, including (1) robustness to errors in congestion signals, (2) fairness, (3) amount of congestion (e.g., delay, loss), and (4) generality (e.g., range of supported link rates). This leads to fundamental tradeoffs between these metrics. Further, we show that many contracts lead to starvation (extreme unfairness), and must be avoided. Hence, contracts are a powerful way to analyze tradeoffs and avoid pitfalls in CCA design and analysis. We empirically validate our findings and discuss their implications on CCA design and network measurement.

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Anup Agarwal, Venkat Arun, and Srinivasan Seshan. Contracts: A Unified Lens on Congestion Control Robustness, Fairness, Congestion, and Generality. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 8:1-8:30, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{agarwal_et_al:OASIcs.NINeS.2026.8,
  author =	{Agarwal, Anup and Arun, Venkat and Seshan, Srinivasan},
  title =	{{Contracts: A Unified Lens on Congestion Control Robustness, Fairness, Congestion, and Generality}},
  booktitle =	{1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)},
  pages =	{8:1--8:30},
  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.2026.8},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-255933},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.8},
  annote =	{Keywords: Transport Protocols, Congestion Control, Fairness}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.20

OpenFLAME: A Federated Spatial Naming Infrastructure

Authors: Sagar Bharadwaj, Ziyong Ma, Ivan Liang, Michael Farb, Anthony Rowe, and Srinivasan Seshan

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

Abstract

Spatial applications, i.e., applications that tie digital information with the physical world, have improved many of our daily activities, such as navigation and ride-sharing. This class of applications also holds significant promise of enabling new industries such as augmented reality and robotics. The development of these applications is enabled by a system that can resolve real-world locations to names, or a spatial naming system. Today, mapping platforms provided by organizations like Google and Apple serve as spatial naming systems. These maps are centralized and primarily cover outdoor spaces. We envision that future spatial applications, such as persistent world-scale augmented reality, would require detailed and precise spatial data across indoor and outdoor spaces. The scale of cartography efforts required to survey indoor spaces and their privacy needs inhibit existing centralized maps from incorporating such spaces into their platform. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of OpenFLAME, a federated spatial naming system, or in other words, a federated mapping infrastructure. OpenFLAME enables independent parties to manage and serve their own maps of physical regions. This unlocks scalability of map management, isolation, and privacy of maps. The discovery system that identifies maps hosted at a given location is a primary component of OpenFLAME. We implement OpenFLAME on top of the existing Domain Name System (DNS), which enables us to leverage its existing infrastructure. We implement map services such as address-to-location mapping, routing, and localization on top of our federated mapping infrastructure.

Cite as

Sagar Bharadwaj, Ziyong Ma, Ivan Liang, Michael Farb, Anthony Rowe, and Srinivasan Seshan. OpenFLAME: A Federated Spatial Naming Infrastructure. In 1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 139, pp. 20:1-20:26, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{bharadwaj_et_al:OASIcs.NINeS.2026.20,
  author =	{Bharadwaj, Sagar and Ma, Ziyong and Liang, Ivan and Farb, Michael and Rowe, Anthony and Seshan, Srinivasan},
  title =	{{OpenFLAME: A Federated Spatial Naming Infrastructure}},
  booktitle =	{1st New Ideas in Networked Systems (NINeS 2026)},
  pages =	{20:1--20:26},
  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.2026.20},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-256051},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.NINeS.2026.20},
  annote =	{Keywords: Geographic naming system, Augmented reality, Robotics}
}

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Documents authored by Seshan, Srinivasan

Contracts: A Unified Lens on Congestion Control Robustness, Fairness, Congestion, and Generality

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OpenFLAME: A Federated Spatial Naming Infrastructure

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