Impact of routing and link layers on TCP performance in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks have attracted attention lately as a means of providing continuous network connectivity to mobile computing devices, regardless of physical location. To date, a large amount of research has focused on the routing protocols needed in such an environment. In this paper, we investigate the effects that the routing and link layers have on TCP performance. In particular, we show how the route cache management strategy in an on-demand ad hoc routing protocol can significantly affect TCP performance. We also take a brief look at the impact of link layer retransmissions on TCP throughput in a fixed, wireless multihop network.