Towards the Classification of TCP Throughput Changes

Analyzing throughput limitations of TCP connections has been a frequently studied topic. While existing approaches determine throughput limitations for whole connections or specific segments of connections, this paper surveys whether such approaches can also be used to classify individual changes in the throughput of a connection.In this paper, we introduce an approach to classify changes in TCP throughput based on their coincide with changes between TCP transfer periods. We evaluate different change point detection methods with generated TCP traffic providing ground truth data regarding throughput changes. Further, we survey the matching between throughput change points and transfer periods in passively captured Internet traffic. We conclude that the classification of TCP throughput changes with TCP transfer periods is feasible for a significant share of changes and observe significant differences in matching results depending on the used change point detection method.