Broadband wireless local loop evaluation via an active TCP connection monitoring methodology

Active monitoring of TCP connections aids in the study of the stability of such connections over a given setup. With the advent of access technologies aiming to provide solutions to the last mile problem, there needs to be a method by which an ISP can study TCP connections over such equipment. TCP in itself has been designed to be stable and has been proven to be stable over many access technologies. But in many cases, the connections are not stable enough from a customer's perspective. Our effort has been to develop a TCP connection monitoring methodology that the ISP can study the rate at which connections are lost. We develop a connection monitoring tool (ConMon) that measures round trip time and throughput apart from detecting connections drops. The path to the end point is also traced in order to study reasons for possible connection drops. We test this tool over wired LAN, cable modem and broadband wireless technologies.