A New Scheme for Improving Performance of TCP over Network including Wireless Links

Abstract

With the proliferation of mobile and wireless computing devices, the demand for continuous network connectivity exists for various wired-and-wireless-integrated networks. Since TCP is the standard network protocol stack for communication on the Internet, its use over the networks is a certainty because it allows seamless integration with the fixed infrastructure. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) assumes a relatively reliable underlying where most packet losses are due to congestion. In a wireless network, however, packet losses will occur more often due to unreliable wireless links than due to congestion. When using TCP over wireless links, each packet loss on the wireless link results in congestion control measures being invoked at the source. This causes severe performance degradation. We propose a new TCP scheme for the various wireless-integrated network topology. The scheme distinguishes wireless losses from packet losses regardless of the location of wireless links on the networks. This solves the severe performance degradation because of the miss notification of transmission loss. Experiments are performed using the Network Simulator (NS-II) from Lawrence Berkeley Labs. The simulator has been extended to incorporate wireless link characteristics.