TCP over Wireless Networks Using Multiple Acknowledgements
Saâd Biaz, Miten N. Mehta, Steven L. West, Nitin H. Vaidya · 1997
TCP protocol has been designed and tuned to perform well on wired network where the packet loss is due mainly to congestion. On heterogeneous networks where some links can be wireless this assumption is no more valid. In this paper, we propose a protocol which makes the TCP protocol layer aware of high bit error rates on wireless links while it tries to minimize the traffic load on the wired network. This is done by avoiding unnecessary retransmissions from TCP. The idea is to acknowledge partially a packet which reaches a base station, if it experiences difficulty (errors or congestion) on the wireless link. The base station is responsible for retransmissions on the wireless link, while it delays timeout at the sender by sending a partial acknowledgement. Research reported is supported in part by Texas Advanced Technology Program grant 009741-052-C and National Science Foundation grant CDA-9529442. 1 Introduction This report describes briefly a protocol for end-to-end reliable co...