A Survey on TCP Performance for Mobile and Wireless Networks

Abstract

Transmission Control Protocol or shortly (TCP) is considered to be the fundamental cell for carrying the ultimate traffic of the internet, thus its performance is crucial for defining the performance of the internet. Previously, where the wired networks were the dominant in the world of the networks communications, TCP worked just fine. Actually TCP worked effi ciently, since it was fi rst introduced to serve the wired networks, and in wired network the only cause of packet losses is congestion. Wired connections are highly reliable. However, when the idea of both wireless and mobile networks were fi rst introduced, the performance of TCP started to shake and started to hinder. Thats happened because of the TCPs inability to identify the true reason behind the losses in the transmitted packets [1]. At one hand, in a regular wired network where the links are highly reliable, the losses in transmitted packets is attributed to congestion. On the other hand, for wireless and mobile networks, the matter of packet losses is a little bit more complicated than that. Accordingly, a number of techniques were introduced to enhance the TCP performance for wireless and mobile networks. In our survey paper we attempt to summarize and discuss the problems that affect TCP performance for wireless and mobile networks, also we are going to compare the different proposed techniques to improve the TCP performance for wireless and mobile networks.