A Measurement Based Performance Study of TCP over GSM/GPRS
Annika Wennström · 2004
Wireless Internet access over GPRS, the packet-oriented extension to GSM, provides for higher data rates and more efficient network utilization compared to circuit-switched access. The performance of the Internet protocols in GPRS is dependent not only on the quality of the radio link, but also on the buffering in the GPRS network. In this paper we investigate the impact of buffering on TCP performance. Measurements are conducted in a GPRS testbed consisting of real network nodes with real protocol implementations. When the buffer between the fixed and the wireless networks is large, then the round trip times may become very long. Measurements with different buffer settings indicate that the buffer could be decreased in order to reduce the queuing delay, without degrading the throughput. Measurements of concurrent packet- and circuit-switched traffic show that buffered data is flushed immediately as the GPRS traffic is preempted by circuit-switched calls. When resources are available again, the lost data must be retransmitted. In many cases this could be avoided by guarding the data with a timer