ACK filtering on bandwidth asymmetry networks

We study the effects of bandwidth asymmetry on end-to-end TCP performance and suggest a mechanism to improve it. Bandwidth asymmetry has been considered a mismatch in the bandwidths in two directions of data transfer. It is common in wireless networks, ADSL networks, etc. In a bandwidth asymmetry network, throughput achieved is not only dependent on the traffic and link characteristics of the forward direction, but significantly determined by those of the backward direction. Some mechanisms, has been proposed to overcome this problem. In our study, we focus on the ACK filtering algorithm, which decrease the rate of ACK on a constrained reverse link, taking advantage of the fact that TCP ACKs are cumulative.