Revisiting wireless link layers and in-order delivery
Sara Landström, Lars-Åke Larzon · Epubl LTU · 2008
Wireless link layers, which perform retransmissions to hide transmission errors from upper layers, enforce inorder delivery to avoid triggering TCP's congestion control mechanisms. However, new reordering robust TCP flavors make it possible to revisit the design of these link layers. In this paper, we study the effects of the link layer configuration (in-order vs out-of-order) on network layer buffering and transport layer smoothness in a WWAN scenario through simulations. We use a standards-compliant TCP, TCP-Aix, and TCP-NCR. The results show that smoothness is improved and the buffer requirement is reduced when out-of-order delivery is allowed.