As we start moving more real-time communications into web browsers with the upcoming WebRTC/RTCWEB offerings, what do we do about congestion control? How do we ensure that all these browser-based communications sessions share the network fairly? With RTC capabilities now already available in builds for browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, how do we deal with the expected increase in voice, video, chat and data traffic?

These are key questions to be discussed at the “Workshop on Congestion Control for Interactive Real-Time Communication” held on July 28, 2012, in Vancouver prior to the start of the 84th meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Hosted by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), the workshop is focused on this challenge:

The development and upcoming widespread deployment of web-based real-time media communication—where RTP is used to and from web browsers to transmit audio, video and data—will likely result in substantial new Internet traffic. Due to the projected volume of this traffic, as well as the fact that it is more likely to use unprovisioned capacity, it is essential that it is transmitted with robust and effective congestion control mechanisms.

Designing congestion control mechanisms that perform well under a wide variety of traffic mixes and over network paths with widely varying characteristics is not easy. Prevention of congestion collapse can be achieved through “circuit breaker” mechanisms, but for media flows that are supposed to coexist with a user’s other ongoing communication sessions, a congestion control mechanism that shares capacity fairly in the presence of a mix of TCP, UDP and other protocol flows is needed.

The workshop is INVITATION-ONLY and you need to submit a position paper to be considered for inclusion. Participation in the workshop is free of charge and there is an option for invited participants to participate remotely. You do not have to register to attend the week-long IETF 84 meeting that follows the workshop, although many of the topics in the workshop will be discussed in the subsequent IETF meetings.

THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING POSITION PAPERS IS JUNE 23, 2012.

Much more information about the workshop and the submission process can be found at: http://www.iab.org/cc-workshop/