Exploiting the adaptive properties of a probing device for TCP in heterogenous networks

End-to-end protocols lack the functionality to efficiently adjust their error control strategies to the distinct characteristics of network environments and to specific constraints of communicating devices. In the context of heterogeneous networks, error control needs to be responsive to the nature of the errors spanning a conservative-through-to-aggressive behavioral spectrum. In the context of mobile, batterypowered devices, the recovery strategy should yield good performance with a minimal transmission effort. We exploit the potential of a probing device to implement an adaptive error control strategy efficiently by shaping data transmission to be assorted with the distinctive characteristics of the underlying wired or wireless network components. We graft our mechanism onto standard TCP; we present encouraging experimental results with wired, wireless and mobile networks. q 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.