Analysis of TCP under Wireless Circumstances: A Performance Evaluation

Abstract

With the emergence of wireless technology, and increase of mobile computing devices, the demand for the better network connectivity is the major interest of the users. Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is the standard network protocol for communication in the Internet, but its performance drastically degrades over wireless networks, as TCP takes packet drop or collision as a sign of congestion. In this paper, we analyze TCP's performance over wireless networks using NS-2 Simulator. Unlike traditional performance evaluation methods for TCP over wireless networks, we consider different versions of TCP over different routing protocols. Moreover, we also consider the effectiveness of TCP both over infrastructure-based and infrastructure-less wireless networks. Simulation results show that TCP's performance varies from scenario to scenario both in infrastructure-based and ad-hoc wireless networks.