A comparison of mechanisms for improving TCP performance over wireless links

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A comparison of mechanisms for improving TCP performance over wireless links

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Applications, Technologies, Architectures, and Protocols for Computer Communication archive
Conference proceedings on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications table of contents

Palo Alto, California, United States

Pages: 256 - 269

Year of Publication: 1996

ISBN:0-89791-790-1

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Authors

Hari Balakrishnan	Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley
Venkata N. Padmanabhan	Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley
Srinivasan Seshan	Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley
Randy H. Katz	IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY and Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley

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SIGCOMM: ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication

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ACM New York, NY, USA

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Downloads (6 Weeks): 15, Downloads (12 Months): 79, Citation Count: 63

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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 non-congestion-related losses due to reasons such as 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. In this paper, we compare several schemes designed to improve the performance of TCP in such networks. These schemes are classified into three broad categories: end-to-end protocols, where the sender is aware of the wireless link; 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 with some knowledge of TCP 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.

REFERENCES

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