A comparison of mechanisms for improving TCP performance overwireless links
Balakrishnan, H.
Padmanabhan, V.N.
Seshan, S.
Katz, R.H.
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA;
This paper appears in: Networking, IEEE/ACM Transactions on
Publication Date: Dec 1997
Volume: 5,
Issue: 6
On page(s): 756-769
ISSN: 1063-6692
References Cited: 28
CODEN: IEANEP
INSPEC Accession Number: 5827708
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/90.650137
Current Version Published: 2002-08-06
Abstract
Reliable transport protocols such as TCP are tuned to perform well
in traditional networks where packet losses occur mostly because of
congestion. However, networks with wireless and other lossy links also
suffer from significant losses due to bit errors and handoffs. TCP
responds to all losses by invoking congestion control and avoidance
algorithms, resulting in degraded end-to end performance in wireless and
lossy systems. We compare several schemes designed to improve the
performance of TCP in such networks. We classify these schemes into
three broad categories: end-to-end protocols, where loss recovery is
performed by the sender; link-layer protocols that provide local
reliability; and split-connection protocols that break the end-to-end
connection into two parts at the base station. We present the results of
several experiments performed in both LAN and WAN environments, using
throughput and goodput as the metrics for comparison. Our results show
that a reliable link-layer protocol that is TCP-aware provides very good
performance. Furthermore, it is possible to achieve good performance
without splitting the end-to-end connection at the base station. We also
demonstrate that selective acknowledgments and explicit loss
notifications result in significant performance improvements
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