Reviewer: Michela Becchi
Date: 9-15-2005
What is the consensus rating for this paper? no real consensus
How confident are you that the consensus judgement treats the paper fairly? unsure
How would you rate the overall review process for this paper? ok, but uneven
How did the disagreements among the reviewers get resolved? Or if you were unable to reach consensus, what were the main sticking points?
The reviewers of the paper and other few students expressed a positive opinion about it. In particular, the reviews agreed in that the paper does not bring really new ideas on the subject of rate controlled flows, but provides a deep analysis which allows a better understanding of the TFRC protocol.
The study is two folded: analytical proofs are companied through empirical data. The reviewers appreciated the methodology but claimed to lack a full understanding (especially of the analytical part) to provide a solid rating.
The main contribution identified in the paper are the findings R4 and R5, claiming that if the sending rate of a flow is sufficiently lower than the one of a competing flow, the loss event rate of the former will be higher (and vice versa). This fact can create divergence when TFRC protocol is used (since its equation uses the loss event rate to determine the sending rate).
One faculty expressed a very negative opinion about the paper and did not really see a clear contribution in it. One reason for this being the fact that the claims in the paper were not enough solid and could be easily put in discussion.
One common criticism was the fact that two basic assumptions (fixed packet size and fixed RTTs) are not realistic, and the authors mention this only in the very final sentence of the conclusion section without really motivating their choice. Moreover, some figures seem not be of immediate interpretation.
Overall, the impression is that the discussion let the audience with different opinions: part of the reviewers still appreciate the methodological effort and consider the conclusion of the authors reasonable, even if recognizing the limitations of the work; the rest remains with a negative opinion about the paper. Finally, I believe that the presence of a significant mathematical part scared many people who really did not feel like reviewing and rating this paper.