MIP: Minimizing the idle period of data transmission in data center networks

In today's data center networks, incast congestion happens when multiple servers send data to one receiver simultaneously. Such congestion results in long idle periods of transmission, which significantly delays the mission complete time (MCT). In this paper, we introduce the MIP, a simple distributed scheme at sender side to Minimize the Idle Periods. To this end, MIP increases the concurrency of data transmission by using proactive fair rate control and cut down idle period further by carefully selected RT O. Extensive simulations show that MIP is able to provide near-optimal MCT performance. In particular, MIP requires no modification to OS kernel or switches in current data center networks.