Improving congestion control in the implementation of ICT at nursing and welfare facilities

In recent years, nursing and welfare facilities have been facing a growing shortage of nursing care workers due to a decline in the working-age population caused by a falling birthrate and aging population. ICT is regarded as one of the solutions to these issues in nursing and welfare facilities, however, issues that arise from ICT have also surfaced. One such problem is the slowdown of communication speed caused by congestion. In this study, network simulations were conducted, and the performance of Reactive TCP, an implemented congestion control algorithm, was evaluated. In the experiment, throughput and the volume of packet losses were measured as the communication volume increased. Loss-based and delay-based schemes are used by Reactive TCP depending on the situation, and packet loss is used as an indicator of congestion. The algorithm is normally operated on a loss basis, and communication is continued on a loss basis if congestion is not detected. When congestion is detected, a switch to delay-based processing is made, and loss-based communication is resumed. Three sets of data were used in the experiment, labeled data (1) through data (3). The algorithm for data (1) is switched when a packet is discarded, for data (2), the switching timing is delayed, and for data (3), the switching timing is accelerated. It was shown by the experimental results that the algorithm in data (1) was highly effective in both throughput and volume of packets lost. However, since this differs from the actual internet environment, further experiments in the actual internet environment need to be considered.