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.