Improving TCP performance in heterogeneous mobile environments by exploiting the explicit cooperation between server and mobile host

Abstract

In recent years, many different kinds of wireless access networks have been deployed and become inseparable parts of the Internet. But TCP, the most widely used transport protocol of the Internet, was designed for stationery hosts. It faces severe challenges when user moves around in these networks and handoff occurs frequently. In this paper, we investigate the potential benefits of bringing explicit cooperation between TCP server and mobile host. For this purpose, TCP HandOff (TCP-HO), a practical end-to-end mechanism, is designed for improving TCP performance in heterogeneous mobile environments. TCP-HO assumes that a mobile host is able to detect the completion of handoff immediately and has a coarse estimation of new wireless link's bandwidth. When a mobile host detects handoff completion, it will immediately notify the server through two duplicate ACKs, whose TCP option also carries the bandwidth of new wireless link. After receiving this notification, the server begins to transmit immediately and keeps updating ssthresh according to the bandwidth from mobile host and its new RTT samples. This update will end after four RTT samples or after congestion is detected. TCP-HO has been implemented in FreeBSD 5.4. Experimental results indicate that in heterogeneous mobile environments, TCP-HO can improve TCP performance a lot without adversely affecting cross traffic even when mobile host only has a coarse estimation of new wireless link's bandwidth. Considering that more and more users are accessing the Internet through heterogeneous wireless networks and mobile host could have a coarse estimation of wireless link's bandwidth, it should be worthwhile to change both server and mobile host for improving TCP performance.