A buffer management algorithm for improving up/down transmission congestion protocol fairness in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks

The fair allocation of the resources is an important issue in wireless local area network (WLAN) because all wireless nodes compete for the same wireless radio channel. When uplink and downlink transmission congestion protocol (TCP) flows coexist in WLAN, the network service is biased toward the uplink TCP flows, and the downlink TCP flows tend to starve. In this article, we investigate the special up/down TCP unfairness problem and point out that the direct cause is the uplink acknowledgement (ACK) packets occupy most buffer space of access point. We thus propose a buffer management algorithm to ensure the fairness among uplink and downlink TCP flows. In order to limit the greedy behavior of ACK packets, the proposed algorithm adjusts the maximum size of buffer allocated for the ACK packets. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed solution not only provides the fairness but also achieves 10–20% lower queue delay and higher network goodput than the other solutions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Cross-layer Dual Queue Approach for Improving TCP Fairness in Infrastructure WLANs

Fairness is one of the most important performance measures in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), where channel is accessed through competition. In this paper, we focus on the fairness problem between TCP uplink and downlink flows in infrastructure WLANs from the cross-layer perspective. First, we show that there exists a notable discrepancy between throughput of uplink flow and that of downlink flow, and discuss its root cause from the standpoint of different responses to TCP data packet drop and TCP ACK packet drop at the access point (AP) buffer. In order to mitigate this unfairness, we propose a dual queue scheme, which works in a cross-layer manner. It employs two separate queues at the AP, one for the data packets of downlink TCP flows and another for the ACK packets of uplink TCP flows, and selects these queues with appropriate probabilities so that TCP per-flow fairness is improved. Moreover, we analyze the behavior of the dual queue scheme and derive throughputs of uplink and downlink flows. Based on this analysis, we obtain the optimal queue selection probabilities for fairness. Extensive simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme is effective and useful in resolving the TCP unfairness problem without deteriorating overall utilization.     

TCP-aware bidirectional bandwidth allocation in IEEE 802.16 networks

In this paper, we propose a bidirectional bandwidth-allocation mechanism to improve TCP performance in the IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access networks. By coupling the bandwidth allocation for uplink and downlink connections, the proposed mechanism increases the throughput of the downlink TCP flow and it enhances the efficiency of uplink bandwidth allocation for the TCP acknowledgment (ACK). According to the IEEE 802.16 standard, when serving a downlink TCP flow, the transmission of the uplink ACK, which is performed over a separate unidirectional connection, incurs additional bandwidth-request/allocation delay. Thus, it increases the round trip time of the downlink TCP flow and results in the decrease of throughput accordingly. First, we derive an analytical model to investigate the effect of the uplink bandwidth-request/allocation delay on the downlink TCP throughput. Second, we propose a simple, yet effective, bidirectional bandwidth-allocation scheme that combines proactive bandwidth allocation with piggyback bandwidth request. The proposed scheme reduces unnecessary bandwidth-request delay and the relevant signaling overhead due to proactive allocation; meanwhile, it maintains high efficiency of uplink bandwidth usage by using piggyback request. Moreover, our proposed scheme is quite simple and practical; it can be simply implemented in the base station without requiring any modification in the subscriber stations or resorting to any cross-layer signaling mechanisms. The simulation results ascertain that the proposed approach significantly increases the downlink TCP throughput and the uplink bandwidth efficiency.     

移动WiMAX网络下行链路TCP吞吐量公平性的跨层优化

该文提出了一种移动WiMAX网络中的TCP公平性跨层优化模型,设计了基于此模型的cross-layer TCP改进协议。利用端节点链路层的速率信息和在基站BS(Base Station)处预分配ACK分组所需带宽的策略改善了下行终端的QoS (Quality of Service)指标,保证了下行终端和上行终端的吞吐量公平性。仿真结果表明cross- layer-TCP改进协议能够在保持原有系统吞吐量的前提下改善下行终端的公平性。     

iVoIP: an intelligent bandwidth management scheme for VoIP in WLANs

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) has been widely used by many mobile consumer devices in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLAN) due to its low cost and convenience. However, delays of all VoIP flows dramatically increase when network capacity is approached. Additionally, unfair traffic distribution between downlink and uplink flows in WLANs impacts the perceived VoIP quality. This paper proposes an intelligent bandwidth management scheme for VoIP services (iVoIP) that improves bandwidth utilization and provides fair downlink–uplink channel access. iVoIP is a cross-layer solution which includes two components: (1) iVoIP-Admission Control, which protects the quality of existing flows and increases the utilization of wireless network resources; (2) iVoIP-Fairness scheme, which balances the channel access opportunity between access point (AP) and wireless stations. iVoIP-Admission Control limits the number of VoIP flows based on an estimation of VoIP capacity. iVoIP-Fairness implements a contention window adaptation scheme at AP which uses stereotypes and considers several major quality of service parameters to balance the network access of downlink and uplink flows, respectively. Extensive simulations and real tests have been performed, demonstrating that iVoIP has both very good VoIP capacity estimation and admission control results. Additionally, iVoIP improves the downlink/uplink fairness level in terms of throughput, delay, loss, and VoIP quality.     

Design of an enhanced access point to optimize TCP performance in Wi-Fi hotspot networks

In the last years, the number of Wi-Fi hotspots at public venues has undergone a substantial growth, promoting the WLAN technologies as the ubiquitous solution to provide high-speed wireless connectivity in public areas. However, the adoption of a random access CSMA-based paradigm for the 802.11 MAC protocol makes difficult to ensure high throughput and a fair allocation of radio resources in 802.11-based WLANs. In this paper we evaluate extensively via simulations the interaction between the flow control mechanisms implemented at the TCP layer and the contention avoidance techniques used at the 802.11 MAC layer. We conducted our study considering initially M wireless stations performing downloads from the Internet. From our results, we observed that the TCP downlink throughput is not limited by the collision events, but by the inability of the MAC protocol to assign a higher chance of accessing the channel to the base station. We propose a simple and easy to implement modification of the base station’s behavior with the purpose of increasing the TCP throughput reducing useless MAC protocol overheads. With our scheme, the base station is allowed to transmit periodically bursts of data frames towards the mobile hosts. We design a resource allocation protocol aimed at maximizing the success probability of the uplink transmissions by dynamically adapting the burst length to the collision probability estimated by the base station. By its design, our scheme is also beneficial to achieve a fairer allocation of the channel bandwidth among the downlink and uplink flows, and among TCP and UDP flows. Simulation results confirm both the improvement in the TCP downlink throughput and the reduction of system unfairness.     

Using Quick‐Start to enhance TCP‐friendly rate control performance in bidirectional satellite networks

In the not so distant future, we envisage an Internet where the biggest share of capacity is used by streaming applications. To avoid congestion collapse from unresponsive flows calls for a robust and ubiquitous end‐to‐end multimedia congestion control mechanism, such as TCP‐friendly rate control (TFRC), which provides fair sharing with the other Internet traffic. This paper therefore analyses the implications of using rate‐adaptive congestion control over satellite links that utilize demand allocation multiple access (DAMA) to maximize satellite transponder utilization. The interaction between TFRC and DAMA is explored using simulations supported by fluidic flow models. The analysis shows that DAMA reduces the start‐up phase of TFRC, causing non‐negligible delays. To mitigate this problem, we propose a new cross‐layer method based on the Quick‐Start mechanism. This can accelerate the start‐up of multimedia flows by a judicious allocation of additional capacity derived from cross‐layer signalling. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TCP-Jersey for wireless IP communications

Improving the performance of the transmission control protocol (TCP) in wireless Internet protocol (IP) communications has been an active research area. The performance degradation of TCP in wireless and wired-wireless hybrid networks is mainly due to its lack of the ability to differentiate the packet losses caused by network congestions from the losses caused by wireless link errors. In this paper, we propose a new TCP scheme, called TCP-Jersey, which is capable of distinguishing the wireless packet losses from the congestion packet losses, and reacting accordingly. TCP-Jersey consists of two key components, the available bandwidth estimation (ABE) algorithm and the congestion warning (CW) router configuration. ABE is a TCP sender side addition that continuously estimates the bandwidth available to the connection and guides the sender to adjust its transmission rate when the network becomes congested. CW is a configuration of network routers such that routers alert end stations by marking all packets when there is a sign of an incipient congestion. The marking of packets by the CW configured routers helps the sender of the TCP connection to effectively differentiate packet losses caused by network congestion from those caused by wireless link errors. This paper describes the design of TCP-Jersey, and presents results from experiments using the NS-2 network simulator. Results from simulations show that in a congestion free network with 1% of random wireless packet loss rate, TCP-Jersey achieves 17% and 85% improvements in goodput over TCP-Westwood and TCP-Reno, respectively; in a congested network where TCP flow competes with VoIP flows, with 1% of random wireless packet loss rate, TCP-Jersey achieves 9% and 76% improvements in goodput over TCP-Westwood and TCP-Reno, respectively. Our experiments of multiple TCP flows show that TCP-Jersey maintains the fair and friendly behavior with respect to other TCP flows.     

基于静态流感知的接纳控制研究

维持链路正常负载是业务流性能指标保证的关键,接纳控制是链路负载有效控制方式。相对链路容量有固定业务区分速率界值的静态流感知接纳控制,应用与流拥塞状态相关的判决概率实现业务接入区分。同时,利用优先公平调度机制的隐性测量功能测量链路优先队列队长和链路公平速率值,共同对下游链路流承载状态进行评价,并作为接纳控制进行判决的依据。仿真显示,相对基于测量的接纳控制算法具有更好的链路状态自适应性和较高的链路资源效率。     

Cross-Layer design in HSDPA system to reduce the TCP effect

This paper focuses on the interaction between the transport control protocol (TCP) layer and the radio interface in the high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) wireless system. In the literature, studies of the interaction between TCP and wireless networks are focused on the evaluation of user bit rate in the case of dedicated channels. In this paper, the interaction between TCP, hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ), and scheduling techniques (especially, proportional fair scheduling) is conducted. Analytical models to evaluate HSDPA cell capacity, user bit rate, and interaction with TCP layer are presented. Even if as expected the bit rate per flow decreases strongly with the congestion frequency in the wired network, it is shown that the overall capacity achieved by HSDPA is not as affected by the TCP layer. Using this result, a method to reduce the effect of TCP on wireless network without losing much cell capacity is proposed. This method has the advantage of modifying the scheduling algorithm only and of not requiring any change to the TCP protocol.     

Performance improvement of TCP in ad hoc networks by mitigating channel contention

In ad hoc networks, the spatial reuse property limits the number of packets which can be spatially transmitted over a path. In standard Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), however, a TCP sender keeps transmitting packets without taking into account this property. This causes heavy contention for the wireless channel, resulting in the performance degradation of TCP flows. Hence, two techniques have been proposed independently in order to reduce the contention. First, a TCP sender utilizes a congestion window limit (CWL), by considering the spatial reuse property. This prevents the TCP sender from transmitting more than CWL number of packets at one time. Second, a delayed ack (DA) strategy is exploited in order to mitigate the contention between the TCP ACK and DATA packets. Recently, although TCP‐DAA (Dynamic Adaptive Acknowledgment) attempts to utilize a CWL‐based DA strategy, TCP‐DAA overlooks a dynamic correlation between these two techniques. This paper, therefore, reveals the dynamic correlation and also proposes a protocol which not only reduces the frequency of the TCP ACK transmissions but also determines a CWL value dynamically, according to network conditions. Simulation studies show that our protocol performs the best in various scenarios, as compared to TCP‐DAA and standard TCP (such as TCP‐NewReno). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Removing redundant TCP functionalities in wired‐cum‐wireless networks with IEEE 802.11e HCCA support

The TCP was originally designed for wired networks, assuming transmission errors were negligible. Actually, any acknowledgment time‐out unconditionally triggers the congestion control mechanism, even in wireless networks in which this assumption is not valid. Consequently, in wireless networks, TCP performance significantly degrades. To avoid this degradation, this paper proposes the so‐called split TCP and UDP. In this approach, the access point splits the TCP connection and uses a customized and lighter transport protocol for the wireless segment. It takes advantage of the IEEE 802.11e Hybrid Coordination Function Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) mechanisms to remove redundant TCP functionalities. Specifically, the HCCA scheduler allows disabling of the congestion control in the wireless link. Similarly, the IEEE 802.11e error control service makes possible to eliminate TCP acknowledgments, therefore reducing the TCP protocol overhead. Finally, the usage of an HCCA scheduler permits providing fairness among the different data flows. The proposed split scheme is evaluated via extensive simulations. Results show that split TCP and User Datagram Protocol outperforms the analyzed TCP flavors—specifically designed for wireless environments—and the split TCP solution, achieving up to 95% of end‐user throughput gain. Furthermore, the proposed solution is TCP friendly because TCP flows are not degraded by the presence of flows by using this approach. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adjusting the TCP Sending Rate and Retransmissions after Retransmission Timeouts Based on One-Way Queuing Delay in Wireless Mesh Network

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is regarded as a viable solution to provide broadband Internet access flexibly and cost efficiently. Improving the performance of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in WMNs is an active research area in the networking community. The existing solutions proposed for improving the TCP performance has concentrated on differentiating the DATA packet drops in the forward direction induced by both network congestion as well as transmission errors. However, the recent studies show that in WMNs packet drops occur not only in the forward direction but also in the reverse direction particularly due to hidden terminal, hidden capture terminal, link asymmetry etc. The loss of ACK packets in the reverse direction cause frequent retransmission timeouts subject to needless retransmissions and unnecessary slowing down the growth of congestion window, which causes the performance degradation of TCP. In this paper, we introduce a sender side TCP algorithm, called detection of packet loss (DPL), which is capable to distinguish the type of packet drops either DATA or ACKs caused by transmission errors as well as network congestion based on one-way queuing delay and react accordingly. To justify our contributions, we implement DPL in Qualnet simulator and compare its performance against existing TCP solutions via extensive simulations. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can accurately distinguish the type of packet drops whether it is a DATA or ACK caused by transmission error or congestion and can significantly improve the performance under a wide range of scenarios in WMNs.     

数据流的活动队列管理算法:MBLUE

MBLUE(Modified BLUE)是一种面向数据流的活动队列管理算法.它不是使用平均队列长度指示缓冲区拥塞状态,而是使用数据报丢弃的频率和队列空闲程度来管理网络拥塞.探测瓶颈连接早期的拥塞信息,通过数据报的丢弃和标记避免拥塞.它只维护一个先进先出队列,以较少的数据流状态信息,在不同流之间公平的分配网络带宽.能够适应瞬时的猝发流,能合理控制非TCP数据流,又能够保持较短的平均队列长度,从而控制、减轻网络拥塞.通过TCP/IP网络的模拟,证实算法在公平的分配网络带宽和降低数据报的丢失率上具有较好的鲁棒性.     

Towards end-host-based identification of competing protocols against TCP in a bottleneck link

Classical Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) designs have never considered the identity of the competing transport protocol as useful information to TCP sources in congestion control mechanisms. When competing against a TCP flow on a bottleneck link, a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) flow can unfairly occupy the entire link bandwidth and suffocate all TCP flows on the link. If it were possible for a TCP source to know the type of transport protocol that deprives it of link access, perhaps it would be better for the TCP source to react in a way which prevents total starvation. In this paper, we use coefficient of variation and power spectral density of throughput traces to identify the presence of UDP transport protocols that compete against TCP flows on bottleneck links. Our results show clear traits that differentiate the presence of competing UDP flows from TCP flows independent of round-trip times variations. Signatures that we identified include an increase in coefficient of variation whenever a competing UDP flow joins the bottleneck link for the first time, noisy spectral density representation of a TCP flow when competing against a UDP flow in the bottleneck link, and a dominant frequency with outstanding power in the presence of TCP competition only. In addition, the results show that signatures for congestion caused by competing UDP flows are different from signatures due to congestion caused by competing TCP flows regardless of their round-trip times. The results in this paper present the first steps towards development of more ’intelligent’ congestion control algorithms with added capability of knowing the identity of aggressor protocols against TCP, and subsequently using this additional information for rate control.     

Optimizing uplink TCP-ACK transmission in WiMAZ OFDMA systems

In WiMAX networks, a bandwidth request-grant process is required for uplink operation. However, the process is not optimized for TCP, since the uplink ACK stream is disrupted due to the following: (a) The process consists of several stages which in turn introduce big transmission delay; and (b) it requires additional uplink bandwidth which is significant compared to the ACK packet size. In this paper, the authors propose a new ACK transmission scheme, where ACK packets are combined with a bandwidth request (BR) header. Through simulation, it is demonstrated that the proposed scheme reduces the overheads of TCP-ACK transmissions effectively.     

Modeling and Analysis of Active Queue Management Schemes under Bursty Traffic

Traffic congestion arising from the shared nature of uplink channels in wireless networks can cause serious problems for the provision of QoS to various services. One approach to overcome these problems is to implement some effective congestion control mechanisms at the downlink buffer at the mobile network link layer or at gateways on the behalf of wireless network access points. Active queue management (AQM) is an effective mechanism to support end-to-end traffic congestion control in modern high-speed networks. Initially developed for Internet routers, AQM is now being also considered as an effective congestion control mechanism to enhance TCP performance over 3G links. This paper proposes an analytical performance model for AQM using various dropping functions. The selection of different dropping functions and threshold values required for this scheme plays a critical role on its effectiveness. The model uses a well-known Markov-modulated Poisson process (MMPP) to capture traffic burstiness and correlations. The validity of the model has been demonstrated through simulation experiments. Extensive analytical results have indicated that exponential dropping function is a good choice for AQM to support efficient congestion control.     

Using TCP rate control for queue input‐output rate matching

In explicit TCP rate control, the receiver's advertised window size in acknowledgment (ACK) packets can be modified by intermediate network elements to reflect network congestion conditions. The TCP receiver's advertised window (i.e. the receive buffer of a TCP connection) limits the maximum window and consequently the throughput that can be achieved by the sender. Appropriate reduction of the advertised window can control the number of packets allowed to be sent from a TCP source. This paper evaluates the performance of a TCP rate control scheme in which the receiver's advertised window size in ACK packets are modified in a network node in order to match the generated load to the assigned bandwidth in the node. Using simulation and performance metrics such as the packet loss rates and the cumulative number of TCP timeouts, we examine the service improvement provided by the TCP rate control scheme to the users. The modified advertised windows computed in the network elements and the link utilization are also examined. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Protecting TCP from a misbehaving receiver

This study presents the design and implementation of a robust TCP congestion control algorithm. TCP was originally designed for cooperative environments, and its evolution over the years has been built on the same basis. TCP expects the end hosts to cooperate with the TCP senders in implementing end‐to‐end congestion control. Therefore, misbehavior of a TCP receiver may result in an unfair division of the available bandwidth between the conforming flows and the irresponsible flows. Accordingly, this study examines the issues arising when conforming TCP connections are obliged to coexist with misbehaving connections. A modification to the TCP protocol is proposed to deal with various types of TCP misbehavior. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Smart TCP Acknowledgment Approach for Multihop Wireless Networks

Reliable data transfer is one of the most difficult tasks to be accomplished in multihop wireless networks. Traditional transport protocols like TCP face severe performance degradation over multihop networks given the noisy nature of wireless media as well as unstable connectivity conditions in place. The success of TCP in wired networks motivates its extension to wireless networks. A crucial challenge faced by TCP over these networks is how to operate smoothly with the 802.11 wireless MAC protocol which also implements a retransmission mechanism at link level in addition to short RTS/CTS control frames for avoiding collisions. These features render TCP acknowledgments (ACK) transmission quite costly. Data and ACK packets cause similar medium access overheads despite the much smaller size of the ACKs. In this paper, we further evaluate our dynamic adaptive strategy for reducing ACK-induced overhead and consequent collisions. Our approach resembles the sender side's congestion control. The receiver is self-adaptive by delaying more ACKs under nonconstrained channels and less otherwise. This improves not only throughput but also power consumption. Simulation evaluations exhibit significant improvement in several scenarios