Impact of Variable MTU Size of Voice Packet To Reduce Packet Loss In Bandwidth Constraint Military Network

Command and control systems in tactical battlefield rely heavily on high quality voice communications. Voice traffic in the battlefield is carried by Military Tactical Networks, which are primarily based on radio links. Most of these radio links have high Bit Error Rate (BER) due to extended ranges, low link margin and enemy jamming action. The bit errors introduced due to any/ combination of these factors results in high packet loss severely impacting voice quality. Packing multiple voice packets in large Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) Ethernet frames has high-transmission efficiency but large frames have higher probability of getting corrupted in BER conditions. Under such situations, reducing MTU frame has a positive impact on voice call quality. By reducing the MTU size the impact of frame corruption is decreased statically which preserves the voice quality. In this paper, we propose a novel network probe algorithm that selects optimum MTU size for layer 2 Ethernet frames carrying VoIP (Voice over IP) traffic. The probe samples all the network interfaces connected to a node for optimal MTU size. The extensive simulation carried out over a well known platform OMNeT++, reveals that optimum MTU size gave less packet loss and delay in Military Network topology.