Hints and Notifications
Ake Larzon, Ulf Bodin · 2002
With current Internet protocols, users may ex- perience low and unpredictable forwarding quality at wireless links. This is due to varying link properties caused by chang- ing radio conditions. Decreased forwarding quality can cause severe degradation in utilization. This is undesirable since for- warding capacity often is expensive at wireless links because of limited radio spectrum. Allowing the application and transport layers to communicate with wireless link layers can improve forwarding quality and utilization. We propose to enable inter-layer communication by adding hints and notifications (HAN) to the Internet architecture. Hints can be introduced and used without notifications, while notifications need hints or a similar mechanism to operate. By using IP options and ICMP messages to implement HAN, a backward-compatible partial deployment is possible. With HAN, the network layer becomes truly wireless friendly and radio spectrum can be used efficiently while supporting both real-time and traditional data applications.