M-TCP

Abstract

Transport connections set up over wireless links are frequently plagued by problems such as - high bit error rate (BER), frequent disconnections of the mobile user, and low wireless bandwidth that may change dynamically. In this paper, we study the effects of frequent disconnections and low variable bandwidth on TCP throughput and propose a protocol that addresses this problem. We discuss the implementation (in NetBSD) of our protocol called M-TCP and compare its performance against other mobile TCP implementations. We show that M-TCP has two significant advantages over other solutions: (1) it maintains end-to-end TCP semantics and, (2) it delivers excellent performance for environments where the mobile encounters periods of disconnection.