[Request for Comments] Congestion Model Extension & Wireshark Visualization

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Taifeng Tan

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Mar 30, 2026, 12:22:52 AM (yesterday) Mar 30

to BBR Development

Hi all,

I'd like to share a Wireshark-related feature proposal that may be of interest to the congestion control community, especially those working with BBR.

Here is the background.

Based on the original BBR paper's three-phase model, I extended it by incorporating additional observable parameters using Wireshark's TCP stream graph capabilities. I refer to this as a “Network Congestion Model” (the name is tentative, and suggestions are very welcome).

With this extension, the model can be directly visualized in Wireshark, making it possible to clearly and accurately identify whether a flow is bandwidth-, buffer-, or application-limited, and to diagnose performance issues in a more deterministic way.

I've explained how this works in detail on my channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@NetworkTechElite

Building on this, I've submitted a feature request to Wireshark to introduce an integrated TCP visualization graph that combines key metrics—RTT, Bytes in Flight, Throughput, and Goodput—into a single view:

https://gitlab.com/wireshark/wireshark/-/work_items/21126

The goal is to make these relationships easier to observe without requiring manual correlation across multiple graphs.

Since this work is closely related to BBR's core ideas, I would greatly appreciate any feedback or perspectives from the group.

You're also very welcome to check out my channels for practical demonstrations:
https://www.youtube.com/@NetworkTechElite [English]
https://www.youtube.com/@NetworkTechEliteCN [Chinese]
https://space.bilibili.com/676050680 [Chinese]

Special thanks to the Google congestion control team for their foundational work on BBR.