Performance enhancement of SACK TCP protocol for wireless network by delaying fast recovery

Abstract

Wireless links have been increasingly used in expanding Internet, making it possible to provide TCP/IP based services even in rural areas. The widely used TCP has been designed to operate efficiently over traditional almost error-free wired links with relatively low delay. Existing TCP suffers from channel delay and errors. No congestion control is needed for losses due to channel problems. In this paper, we propose a technique which allows SACK TCP to take a fair decision of delaying congestion control in case of a loss with the help of selective acknowledgments from receiver. The performance of SACK TCP with proposed modification is compared with original SACK TCP for network with wireless link using simulations. Results indicate considerable performance enhancement in presence of proposed modifications, when only errors cause losses