Improving TCP performance over mobile networks

  • Authors:

  • Hala Elaarag

  • Affiliations:

  • Stetson University, Woodland, DeLand, FL

  • Venue:
  • ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the most commonlyused transport protocol on the Internet. All indications assurethat mobile computers and their wireless communication links willbe an integral part of the future internetworks. In this paper, wepresent how regular TCP is well tuned to react to packet loss inwired networks. We then define mobility and the problems associatedwith it. We discuss why regular TCP is not suitable for mobilehosts and their wireless links by providing simulation results thatdemonstrate the effect of the high bit error rates of the wirelesslink on TCP performance. We discuss and illustrate the problemscaused by the mobility of hosts using a graph tracing packetsbetween fixed and mobile hosts. We then present a survey of theresearch done to improve the performance of TCP over mobilewireless networks. We classify the proposed solutions into threecategories: link layer, end-to-end and split. We discuss theintuition behind each solution and present example protocols ofeach category. We discuss the protocols functionality, theirstrengths and weaknesses. We also provide a comparison of thedifferent approaches in the same category and on the categorylevel. We conclude this survey with a recommendation of thefeatures that need to be satisfied in a standard mobile TCPprotocol.