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19.1 Implications for the Network and for Competing Flows

19.1 Implications for the Network and for Competing Flows​

Subverting end-to-end congestion control can have negative impacts on the network and competing flows, leading to potential unfairness and increased congestion.

If a flow subverts end-to-end congestion control by falsely indicating ECN-capability or clearing congestion indications, it may gain a larger bandwidth share than flows that correctly respond to congestion. This could result in:

  • Unfairness to competing flows: Flows that subvert congestion control may gain a disproportionate share of bandwidth, harming the performance of correctly-behaving flows.
  • Increased congestion: Flows that fail to respond to congestion indications may cause persistent or increased network congestion, affecting all flows.
  • Network stability issues: If multiple flows subvert congestion control, it could lead to network instability and degraded performance.

However, it is important to note that these potential impacts are no worse than what could be caused by end nodes deliberately not implementing or disabling end-to-end congestion control. Even without ECN, malicious or misconfigured end systems could similarly subvert congestion control.

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