  In this work, we look at the impact of router configurations on DCTCP and
Cubic traffic when both algorithms share router buffers in the data center.
Modern data centers host traffic with mixed congestion controls, including
DCTCP and Cubic traffic. Both DCTCP and Cubic in the data center can compete
with each other and potentially starve and/or be unfair to each other when
sharing buffer space in the data center. This happens since both algorithms are
at odds with each other in terms of buffer utilization paradigms where DCTCP
attempts to limit buffer utilization while Cubic generally fills buffers to
obtain high throughput. As a result, we propose methods for a
measurement-driven analysis of DCTCP and Cubic performance when sharing buffers
in data center routers via simulation. We run around 10000 simulation
experiments with unique router configurations and network conditions.
Afterwards, we present a generalizable ML model to capture the effect that
different buffer settings have on DCTCP and Cubic streaming traffic in the data
center. Finally, we suggest that this model can be used to tune buffer settings
in the data center.
