TCP performance and its improvement over wireless links
Jianping Pan, J.W. Mark, Xuemin Shen · 2002
TCP performs reasonably well over the Internet where packet losses are mainly due to network congestion. However, TCP suffers significant throughput degradation over hybrid wireless/IP networks where packet losses are also due to transmission errors in wireless segments and during end-host handovers. In this paper, the micro-scale behavior and packet-level performance of four popular TCP variants over wireless links are assessed, and a modified TCP sender which incorporates a heuristic segment-in-flight estimation algorithm to improve the TCP throughput is proposed. Extensive simulations show that the modified TCP achieves better end-to-end performance, and still keeps the fairness and the compatibility with ordinary TCP variants.