A Novel Wireless TCP and its Steady State Throughput Model

1　Introduction　WiththegrowthofwirelessnetworksandtheInter net,thedatatransmissionserviceoverwirelessnet worksbecomesmoreattractive .InthecurrentInternet,TCPiswidelyusedinpopularapplicationslikeTelnet,FTP ,andHTTP .　TCPisareliableconnection oriented protocolthatimplementscongestioncontrolbymeansofaslidingwindowalgorithm .TCPTahoeandReno[1～ 2 ] ,whichmakeuseoftheSlowStart (SS)andCongestionAvoid ance (CA)algorithmstoadjustthewindowsize ,havegotmuchsuccessintheInternet.Inparticular…     

TCP CERL: congestion control enhancement over wireless networks

In this paper, we propose and verify a modified version of TCP Reno that we call TCP Congestion Control Enhancement for Random Loss (CERL). We compare the performance of TCP CERL, using simulations conducted in ns-2, to the following other TCP variants: TCP Reno, TCP NewReno, TCP Vegas, TCP WestwoodNR and TCP Veno. TCP CERL is a sender-side modification of TCP Reno. It improves the performance of TCP in wireless networks subject to random losses. It utilizes the RTT measurements made throughout the duration of the connection to estimate the queue length of the link, and then estimates the congestion status. By distinguishing random losses from congestion losses based on a dynamically set threshold value, TCP CERL successfully attacks the well-known performance degradation issue of TCP over channels subject to random losses. Unlike other TCP variants, TCP CERL doesn’t reduce the congestion window and slow start threshold when random loss is detected. It is very simple to implement, yet provides a significant throughput gain over the other TCP variants mentioned above. In single connection tests, TCP CERL achieved an 175, 153, 85, 64 and 88% throughput gain over TCP Reno, TCP NewReno, TCP Vegas, TCP WestwoodNR and TCP Veno, respectively. In tests with multiple coexisting connections, TCP CERL achieved an 211, 226, 123, 70 and 199% throughput improvement over TCP Reno, TCP NewReno, TCP Vegas, TCP WestwoodNR and TCP Veno, respectively.     

ATCP: TCP for mobile ad hoc networks

Transport connections set up in wireless ad hoc networks are plagued by problems such as high bit error rates, frequent route changes, and partitions. If we run the transmission control protocol (TCP) over such connections, the throughput of the connection is observed to be extremely poor because TCP treats lost or delayed acknowledgments as congestion. We present an approach where we implement a thin layer between Internet protocol and standard TCP that corrects these problems and maintains high end-to-end TCP throughput. We have implemented our protocol in FreeBSD, and we present results from extensive experimentation done in an ad hoc network. We show that our solution improves the TCP's throughput by a factor of 2-3     

TCP Westwood: End-to-End Congestion Control for Wired/Wireless Networks

TCP Westwood (TCPW) is a sender-side modification of the TCP congestion window algorithm that improves upon the performance of TCP Reno in wired as well as wireless networks. The improvement is most significant in wireless networks with lossy links. In fact, TCPW performance is not very sensitive to random errors, while TCP Reno is equally sensitive to random loss and congestion loss and cannot discriminate between them. Hence, the tendency of TCP Reno to overreact to errors. An important distinguishing feature of TCP Westwood with respect to previous wireless TCP extensions is that it does not require inspection and/or interception of TCP packets at intermediate (proxy) nodes. Rather, TCPW fully complies with the end-to-end TCP design principle. The key innovative idea is to continuously measure at the TCP sender side the bandwidth used by the connection via monitoring the rate of returning ACKs. The estimate is then used to compute congestion window and slow start threshold after a congestion episode, that is, after three duplicate acknowledgments or after a timeout. The rationale of this strategy is simple: in contrast with TCP Reno which blindly halves the congestion window after three duplicate ACKs, TCP Westwood attempts to select a slow start threshold and a congestion window which are consistent with the effective bandwidth used at the time congestion is experienced. We call this mechanism faster recovery. The proposed mechanism is particularly effective over wireless links where sporadic losses due to radio channel problems are often misinterpreted as a symptom of congestion by current TCP schemes and thus lead to an unnecessary window reduction. Experimental studies reveal improvements in throughput performance, as well as in fairness. In addition, friendliness with TCP Reno was observed in a set of experiments showing that TCP Reno connections are not starved by TCPW connections. Most importantly, TCPW is extremely effective in mixed wired and wireless networks where throughput improvements of up to 550% are observed. Finally, TCPW performs almost as well as localized link layer approaches such as the popular Snoop scheme, without incurring the overhead of a specialized link layer protocol.     

TCP在无线通信中的问题以及解决方案

由于TCP/IP协议非常简单且可靠,所以它们的组合决定了目前的大多数通信方式（从有线骨干网到混合网）。现在TCP协议已经成为大多数应用事实上的标准。TCP协议最初是为有线网络而设计的。在有线网络中随机比特差错率是可以忽略的。拥塞主要是由包丢失造成的。很多研究都表明未修改的标准TCP协议在无线环境中的性能是很差的,因为它无法区分出数据包的丢失是由于拥塞还是传输差错。分析了TCP在无线IP通信环境中存在的问题,并详细给出相应的解决方案。     

An enhancement of TCP Veno over light-load wireless networks

This letter observes that TCP Veno behaves conservatively over light-load wireless networks. A new variable, congestion loss rate, is introduced into Veno's algorithm. It helps Veno deal with random loss more intelligently, by keeping its congestion window increasing if the link load is in light state. The simulation results demonstrate that, such enhancement can improve Veno's throughput up to 60% without any fairness or friendliness sacrificed.     

TCP在无线通信中存在的问题及解决方案

TCP和IP协议非常简单且可靠,它们的组合决定了目前的大多数通信方式(从有线骨干网到混合网)。TCP协议最初是为有线网络而设计的,目前已成为大多数应用事实上的标准。在有线网络中随机比特差错率可以忽略,拥塞主要由包丢失造成。很多研究都表明未修改的TCP协议在无线环境中的性能很差,因为它无法区分数据包的丢失是由于拥塞还是传输差错造成的。文章分析了TCP在无线IP通信中存在的问题,详细给出了相应的解决方案。     

Enhancement of TCP over wired/wireless networks with packet loss classifiers inferred by supervised learning

TCP is suboptimal in heterogeneous wired/wireless networks because it reacts in the same way to losses due to congestion and losses due to link errors. In this paper, we propose to improve TCP performance in wired/wireless networks by endowing it with a classifier that can distinguish packet loss causes. In contrast to other proposals we do not change TCP’s congestion control nor TCP’s error recovery. A packet loss whose cause is classified as link error will simply be ignored by TCP’s congestion control and recovered as usual, while a packet loss classified as congestion loss will trigger both mechanisms as usual. To build our classification algorithm, a database of pre-classified losses is gathered by simulating a large set of random network conditions, and classification models are automatically built from this database by using supervised learning methods. Several learning algorithms are compared for this task. Our simulations of different scenarios show that adding such a classifier to TCP can improve the throughput of TCP substantially in wired/wireless networks without compromizing TCP-friendliness in both wired and wireless environments.     

The performance of TCP/IP for networks with high bandwidth-delayproducts and random loss

This paper examines the performance of TCP/IP, the Internet data transport protocol, over wide-area networks (WANs) in which data traffic could coexist with real-time traffic such as voice and video. Specifically, we attempt to develop a basic understanding, using analysis and simulation, of the properties of TCP/IP in a regime where: (1) the bandwidth-delay product of the network is high compared to the buffering in the network and (2) packets may incur random loss (e.g., due to transient congestion caused by fluctuations in real-time traffic, or wireless links in the path of the connection). The following key results are obtained. First, random loss leads to significant throughput deterioration when the product of the loss probability and the square of the bandwidth-delay product is larger than one. Second, for multiple connections sharing a bottleneck link, TCP is grossly unfair toward connections with higher round-trip delays. This means that a simple first in first out (FIFO) queueing discipline might not suffice for data traffic in WANs. Finally, while the Reno version of TCP produces less bursty traffic than the original Tahoe version, it is less robust than the latter when successive losses are closely spaced. We conclude by indicating modifications that may be required both at the transport and network layers to provide good end-to-end performance over high-speed WANs     

Impact of Secondary User Block on the TCP Throughput in Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

The cognitive radio sensor network (CRSN) has emerged as a promising solution to overcome spectrum under-utilization and spectrum scarcity problems in a resource-constrained wireless sensor network. In CRSN, TCP has to cope with a new type of packet loss due to the primary users arrival, known as secondary user blocking loss (SBL), otherwise It leads to significant TCP throughput degradation. In this paper, two main contributions are provided on the modeling of SBL and throughput evaluation of transport layer protocol for CRSN. First, it is identified two main factors of SBL and the probability of them is modeled by a discrete-time Markov chain. Second, a new congestion control algorithm is proposed to distinguish between actual congestion from the wrong congestion due to the SBL by considering the dynamic nature of CRSN. The obtained results through proposed model are verified using the COGNS framework based on NS2, which is a simulation framework for cognitive radio sensor networks. The proposed algorithm is compared with some of the well-known transport protocol TFRC-CR, OHTP and TCP Reno. The results confirm that our proposed algorithm is the best among them.

     

An enhanced congestion avoidance mechanism for TCP Vegas

TCP Vegas detects network congestion in the early stage and successfully prevents periodic packet loss that usually occurs in traditional schemes. It has been demonstrated that TCP Vegas achieves much higher throughput than TCP Reno. However, TCP Vegas cannot prevent unnecessary throughput degradation when congestion occurs in the backward path. In this letter, we propose an enhanced congestion avoidance mechanism for TCP Vegas. By distinguishing whether congestion occurs in the forward path or not, it significantly improves the connection throughput when the backward path is congested.     

Enhancing Fairness and Throughput of TCP in Heterogeneous Wireless Access Networks

Most of the recent research on TCP over heterogeneous wireless networks has concentrated on differentiating between packet drops caused by congestion and link errors, to avoid significant throughput degradations due to the TCP sending window being frequently shut down, in response to packet losses caused not by congestion but by transmission errors over wireless links. However, TCP also exhibits inherent unfairness toward connections with long round-trip times or traversing multiple congested routers. This problem is aggravated by the difference of bit-error rates between wired and wireless links in heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, we apply the TCP Bandwidth Allocation (TBA) algorithm, which we have proposed previously, to improve TCP fairness over heterogeneous wireless networks with combined wireless and wireline links. To inform the sender when congestion occurs, we propose to apply Wireless Explicit Congestion Notification (WECN). By controlling the TCP window behavior with TBA and WECN, congestion control and error-loss recovery are effectively separated. Further enhancement is also incorporated to smooth traffic bursts. Simulation results show that not only can the combined TBA and WECN mechanism improve TCP fairness, but it can maintain good throughput performance in the presence of wireless losses as well. A salient feature of TBA is that its main functions are implemented in the access node, thus simplifying the sender-side implementation.     

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.     

Syndrome: a light‐weight approach to improving TCP performance in mobile wireless networks

It is well known that the performance of TCP deteriorates in a mobile wireless environment. This is due to the fact that although the majority of packet losses are results of transmission errors over the wireless links, TCP senders still take packet loss as an indication of congestion, and adjust their congestion windows according to the additive increase and multiplicative decrease (AIMD) algorithm. As a result, the throughput attained by TCP connections in the wireless environment is much less than it should be. The key problem that leads to the performance degradation is that TCP senders are unable to distinguish whether packet loss is a result of congestion in the wireline network or transmission errors on the wireless links. In this paper, we propose a light‐weight approach, called syndrome, to improving TCP performance in mobile wireless environments. In syndrome, the BS simply counts, for each TCP connection, the number of packets that it relays to the destination host so far, and attaches this number in the TCP header. Based on the combination of the TCP sequence number and the BS‐attached number and a solid theoretical base, the destination host will be able to tell where (on the wireline or wireless networks) packet loss (if any) occurs, and notify TCP senders (via explicit loss notification, ELN) to take appropriate actions. If packet loss is a result of transmission errors on the wireless link, the sender does not have to reduce its congestion window. Syndrome is grounded on a rigorous, analytic foundation, does not require the base station to buffer packets or keep an enormous amount of states, and can be easily incorporated into the current protocol stack as a software patch. Through simulation studies in ns‐2 (UCB, LBNL, VINT network simulator, http://www‐mash.cs.berkeley.edu/ns/ ), we also show that syndrome significantly improves the TCP performance in wireless environments and the performance gain is comparable to the heavy‐weight SNOOP approach (either with local retransmission or with ELN) that requires the base station to buffer, in the worst case, a window worth of packets or states. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Steady state and transient state behaviours analyses of TCP connections considering interactions between TCP connections and network

The Internet uses a window‐based congestion control mechanism in transmission control protocol (TCP). In the literature, there have been a great number of analytical studies on TCP. Most of those studies have focused on the statistical behaviour of TCP by assuming a constant packet loss probability in the network. However, the packet loss probability, in reality, changes according to the packet transmission rates from TCP connections. Conversely, the window size of a TCP connection is dependent on the packet loss probability in the network. In this paper, we explicitly model the interaction between the congestion control mechanism of TCP and the network as a feedback system. By using this model, we analyse the steady state and the transient state behaviours of TCP. We derive the throughput and the packet loss probability of TCP, and the number of packets queued in the bottleneck router. We then analyse the transient state behaviour using a control theoretic approach, showing the influence of the number of TCP connections and the propagation delay on the transient state behaviour of TCP. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

无线网络中TCP拥塞控制算法的性能分析

根据无线网络中存在随机数据包丢失的特定情况,对TCP拥塞控制算法在无线网络中的性能进行了分析。理论分析和仿真结果表明,随着无线链路中随机数据包丢失概率的增加,TCP拥塞控制算法将导致无线网络性能的严重下降。     

A comparison of mechanisms for improving TCP performance overwireless links

Reliable transport protocols such as TCP are tuned to perform well in traditional networks where packet losses occur mostly because of congestion. However, networks with wireless and other lossy links also suffer from significant losses due to bit errors and handoffs. TCP responds to all losses by invoking congestion control and avoidance algorithms, resulting in degraded end-to end performance in wireless and lossy systems. We compare several schemes designed to improve the performance of TCP in such networks. We classify these schemes into three broad categories: end-to-end protocols, where loss recovery is performed by the sender; link-layer protocols that provide local reliability; and split-connection protocols that break the end-to-end connection into two parts at the base station. We present the results of several experiments performed in both LAN and WAN environments, using throughput and goodput as the metrics for comparison. Our results show that a reliable link-layer protocol that is TCP-aware provides very good performance. Furthermore, it is possible to achieve good performance without splitting the end-to-end connection at the base station. We also demonstrate that selective acknowledgments and explicit loss notifications result in significant performance improvements     

多个TCP连接的拥塞丢包模型

本文提出了有关TCP连接的拥塞丢包分析模型.网络瓶颈一般承载许多TCP连接,瓶颈处不可避免的拥塞和缓存溢出,是导致网上丢包的主要原因.网络瓶颈处的行为很大程度上左右了网络性能.本文的模型估计了存在大量持续TCP连接时,网络瓶颈的丢包概率和网络传输中断概率,给出了对实际网络的良好近似.这对于研究TCP对网络性能的影响,提出改善网络性能的新算法,以及分析(从长远来看)TCP还应做哪些改进,都是非常有用的.     

Modeling TCP SACK performance over wireless channels with semi-reliable ARQ/FEC

Providing reliable data communications over wireless channels is a challenging task because time-varying wireless channel characteristics often lead to bit errors. These errors result in loss of IP packets and, consequently, TCP segments encapsulated into these packets. Since TCP cannot distinguish packet losses due to bit corruption from those due to network congestion, any packet loss caused by wireless channel impairments leads to unnecessary execution of the TCP congestion control algorithms and, hence, sub-optimal performance. Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) try to improve communication reliability and reduce packet losses by detecting and recovering corrupted bits. Most analytical models that studied the effect of ARQ and FEC on TCP performance assumed that the ARQ scheme is perfectly persistent (i.e., completely reliable), thus a frame is always successfully transmitted irrespective of the number of transmission attempts it takes. In this paper, we develop an analytical cross-layer model for a TCP connection running over a wireless channel with a semi-reliable ARQ scheme, where the amount of transmission attempts is limited by some number. The model allows to evaluate the joint effect of stochastic properties of the wireless channel characteristics and various implementation-specific parameters on TCP performance, which makes it suitable for performance optimization studies. The input parameters include the bit error rate, the value of the normalized autocorrelation function of bit error observations at lag 1, the strength of the FEC code, the persistency of ARQ, the size of protocol data units at different layers, the raw data rate of the wireless channel, and the bottleneck link buffer size.     

TCP-H：基于三重判决的TCP拥塞控制

在异构无线网络中存在高误码、切换、信号衰落等链路特性,使传统的TCP拥塞控制机制受到了挑战。在不增加开销的情况下,基于丢包检测、RTT时间和ACK返回速率三重判决,提出了一种新的TCP拥塞控制机制（TCP—H）。仿真结果表明,TCP—H增强了对拥塞和随机差错的区分能力,满足公平性要求,改进的最小RTT计算方法解决了在低延迟向高延迟网络切换的时Vegas,Westwood等算法存在的最小RTT更新问题,有效提高了在异构无鲅网络环埔下TCP的性能．