A Survey on Improving TCP Performance over Wireless Networks
Xiang Chen, Hongqiang Zhai, Jianfeng Wang, Yuguang Michael Fang · Kluwer Academic Publishers eBooks · 2006
INTRODUCTION As a result of the advancement of wireless technology and the proliferation of handheld wireless terminals, recent years have witnessed an ever-increasing popularity of wireless networks, ranging from wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) and wireless wide-area networks (WWANs) to mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). In WLANs (e.g., the Wi-Fi technology) or in WWANs (e.g., 2.5G/3G/4G cellular networks), mobile hosts communicate with an access point or a base station that is connected to the wired networks. Obviously, only one hop wireless link is needed for communications between a mobile host and a stationary host in wired networks. In contrast, there is no fixed infrastructure such as base stations or access points in a MANET. Each node in a MANET is capable of moving independently and functioning as a router that discovers and maintains routes and forwards packets to other nodes. Thus, MANETs are multi-hop wireless networks by nature. Note that MANETs may be connected at th