802.11 buffers: when bigger is not better?

Authors:
David Malone;Hanghang Qi;Dmitri Botvich;Paul Patras
Affiliations:
Hamilton Institute, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland;Hamilton Institute, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland;TSSG, Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland;Hamilton Institute, National University of Ireland, Maynooth, Ireland
Venue:
WiFlex'13 Proceedings of the First international conference on Wireless Access Flexibility
Year:
2013

Citing 8
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Abstract

While there have been considerable advances in the modelling of 802.11's MAC layer in recent years, 802.11 with finite buffer space is considered difficult to analyse. In this paper, we study the impact of finite buffers' effect on the 802.11 performance, in view of the requirements of interactive applications sensitive to delay and packet loss. Using both state-of-the art and simplified queueing models, we identify a surprising result. Specifically, we find that increased buffering throughout an 802.11 network will not only incur delay, but may actually increase the packet loss experienced by stations. By means of numerical analysis and simulations we show that this non-monotonic behaviour arises because of the contention-based nature of the medium access protocol, whose performance is closely related to the traffic load and the buffer size. Finally, we discuss on protocol and buffer tuning towards eliminating such undesirable effect.