Study of Proposed Methods for Improving TCP Performance Over Wireless Links

TCP is designed for networks with assumption that major losses occur only due to congestion of network traffic. On a wireless network TCP misinterprets the transmission losses due to bit errors and handoffs as losses caused by congestion, and triggers congestion control mechanisms. Because of its end to end delivery model, congestion handling and avoidance mechanisms, TCP has been widely accepted as Transport layer protocol for internetworks. Extension of Internetworks over wireless links is inevitable with the spread of ubiquitous computing and mobile communications. This paper presents study of different mechanisms proposed to extend Transport Control Protocol and other alternate solutions to enhance end to end performance over lossy wireless links. The paper studies details of different design choices proposed and their technical advantages and disadvantages. Finally, an analysis and proposal for best choice of proposed schemes are made for wireless networks.