Investigating TCP performance in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become increasingly important in view of their promise of ubiquitous connectivity beyond traditional fixed infrastructure networks. Such networks, consisting of potentially highly mobile nodes, have provided new challenges by introducing special consideration stemming from the unique characteristics of the wireless medium and the dynamic nature of the network topology. The TCP protocol, which has been widely deployed on a multitude of internetworks including the Internet, is naturally viewed as the de facto reliable transport protocol for use in MANETs. However, assumptions made at TCP’s inception reflected characteristics of the prevalent wired infrastructure of networks at the time and could subsequently lead to sub-optimal performance when used in wireless ad hoc environments. The basic presupposition underlying TCP congestion control is that packet losses are predominantly an indication of congestion in the network. The detrimental effect of such an assumption on TCP’s performance in MANET environments has been a long-standing research problem. Hence, previous work has focused on addressing the ambiguity behind the cause of packet loss as perceived by TCP by proposing changes at various levels across the network protocol stack, such as at the MAC mechanism of the transceiver or via coupling with the routing protocol at the network layer. The main challenge addressed by the current work is to propose new methods to ameliorate the illness-effects of TCP’s misinterpretation of the causes of packet loss in MANETs. An assumed restriction on any proposed modifications is that resulting performance increases should be achievable by introducing limited changes confined to the transport layer. Such a restriction aids incremental adoption and ease of deployment by requiring minimal implementation effort. Further, the issue of packet loss ambiguity, from a transport layer perspective, has, by definition, to be dealt with in an end-to-end fashion. As such, a proposed solution may involve implementation at the sender, the receiver or both to address TCP shortcomings. Some attempts at describing TCP behaviour in MANETs have been previously reported in the literature. However, a thorough enquiry into the performance of those TCP agents popular in terms of research and adoption has been lacking. Specifically, very little work has been performed on an exhaustive analysis of TCP variants across different MANET routing protocols and under various mobility conditions. The first part of the dissertation addresses this shortcoming through extensive simulation evaluation in order to ascertain the relative performance merits of each TCP variant in terms of achieved goodput over dynamic topologies. Careful examination reveals sub-par performance of TCP Reno, the largely equivalent performance of NewReno and SACK, whilst the effectiveness of a proactive TCP variant (Vegas) is explicitly stated and justified for the first time in a dynamic MANET environment. Examination of the literature reveals that in addition to losses caused by route breakages, the hidden terminal effect contributes significantly to non-congestion induced packet losses in MANETs, which in turn has noticeably negative impact on TCP goodput. By adapting the conservative slow start mechanism of TCP Vegas into a form suitable for reactive TCP agents, like Reno, NewReno and SACK, the second part of the dissertation proposes a new Reno-based congestion avoidance mechanism which increases TCP goodput considerably across long paths by mitigating the negative effects of hidden terminals and alleviating some of the ambiguity of non-congestion related packet loss in MANETs. The proposed changes maintain intact the end-to-end semantics of TCP and are solely applicable to the sender. The new mechanism is further contrasted with an existing transport layer-focused solution and is shown to perform significantly better in a range of dynamic scenarios. As solution from an end-to-end perspective may be applicable to either or both communicating ends, the idea of implementing receiver-side alterations is also explored. Previous work has been primarily concerned with reducing receiver-generated cumulative ACK responses by “bundling” them into as few packets as possible thereby reducing misinterpretations of packet loss due to hidden terminals. However, a thorough evaluation of such receiver-side solutions reveals limitations in common evaluation practices and the solutions themselves. In an effort to address this shortcoming, the third part of this research work first specifies a tighter problem domain, identifying the circumstances under which the problem may be tackled by an end-to-end solution. Subsequent original analysis reveals that by taking into account optimisations possible in wireless communications, namely the partial or complete omission of the RTS/CTS handshake, noticeable improvements in TCP goodput are achievable especially over long paths. This novel modification is activated in a variety of topologies and is assessed using new metrics to more accurately gauge its effectiveness in a wireless multihop environment

An interaction between congestion-control based transport protocols and MANET routing protocols

Problem statement: Although many efforts have been done on studying the behaviour of TCP in MANET, but the behaviour of TFRC remain unclear in MANET. The purpose of this research is two folds.First, we studied the behaviour of TFRC and TCP over AODV and DSR as the underlying routing protocols in terms of throughput, delay and jitter.The second objective was to identify whether MANET routing protocols have an impact on transport protocols or not.Approach: Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) was used to conduct all of the experiments, i.e., TFRC over AODV, TFRC over DSR, TCP over AODV and TCP over DSR.We created 30 nodes on a 1000×1000 m location area and each node was assigned CBR traffic, transport protocol and routing protocol.In order to simulate the nodes mobility, we implemented a Random Waypoint mobility model with varying speeds of 5, 10, 15 and 20 m sec−1 (m/sec) with a 10 sec pause time.Results: We observed that TFRC throughput increases almost 55% when using DSR as its routing protocol, but TCP throughput has no significant difference with different underlying protocols.However, in terms of jitter and delay, both routing protocols, i.e., AODV and DSR have the impact of more than 50% on TFRC and TCP. Conclusion/Recommendations: The results obtained also show us that TFRC or TCP should choose AODV as its routing protocol because it has less jitter which is one of the critical performance metrics for multimedia applications

Fairness Comparison of TCP Variants over Proactive and Reactive Routing Protocol in MANET

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are applicable in an infrastructureless environment where the mobile devices act as routers and intermediate nodes are used to transfer segments to their final destination. As Transmission control protocol (TCP) was originated for Internet with fundamentally different properties, faces serious challenges when used in mobile ad hoc networks. TCP functionality degrades, due to special properties of MANET such as route failure because of significant change of network topology and link errors. TCP uses Congestion Control Algorithms; TCP Vegas is one of them which claim to have better throughput comparing with other TCP variants in a wired network. Fairness issues of TCP Variants in MANET including existing routing protocol are still unsolved. To determine the best TCP Variants in MANET environment over renowned routing protocol is the main objective of this paper. A Study on the throughput fairness of TCP Variants namely, Vegas, Reno, New Reno, SACK, FACK, and Cubic are performed via simulation experiment using network simulator (ns-2) over existing routing protocol, named, AODV, AOMDV, DSDV, and DSR. This fairness evaluation of TCP flows arranged a contrast medium for the TCP Variants using stated routing protocol in MANET. However, TCP Vegas obtain unfair throughput in MANET. The simulation results show that TCP Reno outperforms other TCP variants under DSDV routing protocol

Performance Evaluation of Reactive Routing Protocols in MANETs in Association with TCP Newreno

We inspect the performance of TCP NewReno protocol for data transfer in Mobile Ad hoc networks (MANETs). Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocols and AdHoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) are standard reactive routing protocols widely used in MANETs. In addition we also have to consider Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as essential for MANETs since it is one of the widely used internet protocol for dependable data transmission. TCP has its variants namely TCP Reno, TCP NewReno , TCP Vegas and TCP SACK. In this paper we are evaluating the performance of DSR and AODV in association with TCP Newreno with respect to various parameters such as Average throughput, instant throughput, residual energy, packet delivery ratio. The ns-2 network simulator was used for simulation

Performance metrics and routing in vehicular ad hoc networks

The aim of this thesis is to propose a method for enhancing the performance of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). The focus is on a routing protocol where performance metrics are used to inform the routing decisions made. The thesis begins by analysing routing protocols in a random mobility scenario with a wide range of node densities. A Cellular Automata algorithm is subsequently applied in order to create a mobility model of a highway, and wide range of density and transmission range are tested. Performance metrics are introduced to assist the prediction of likely route failure. The Good Link Availability (GLA) and Good Route Availability (GRA) metrics are proposed which can be used for a pre-emptive action that has the potential to give better performance. The implementation framework for this method using the AODV routing protocol is also discussed. The main outcomes of this research can be summarised as identifying and formulating methods for pre-emptive actions using a Cellular Automata with NS-2 to simulate VANETs, and the implementation method within the AODV routing protocol

Simulation based Study of TCP Variants in Hybrid Network

© ASEE 2011Transmission control protocol (TCP) was originally designed for fixed networks to provide the reliability of the data delivery. The improvement of TCP performance was also achieved with different types of networks with introduction of new TCP variants. However, there are still many factors that affect performance of TCP. Mobility is one of the major affects on TCP performance in wireless networks and MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Network). To determine the best TCP variant from mobility point of view, we simulate some TCP variants in real life scenario. This paper addresses the performance of TCP variants such as TCP-Tahoe, TCP-Reno, TCP-New Reno, TCPVegas, TCP-SACK and TCP-Westwood from mobility point of view. The scenarios presented in this paper are supported by Zone routing Protocol (ZRP) with integration of random waypoint mobility model in MANET area. The scenario shows the speed of walking person to a vehicle and suited particularly for mountainous and deserted areas. On the basis of simulation, we analyze Round trip time (RTT) fairness, End-to-End delay, control overhead, number of broken links during the delivery of data. Finally analyzed parameters help to find out the best TCP variant

Simulation based Study of TCP Variants in Hybrid Network

Transmission control protocol (TCP) was originally designed for fixed networks to provide the reliability of the data delivery. The improvement of TCP performance was also achieved with different types of networks with introduction of new TCP variants. However, there are still many factors that affect performance of TCP. Mobility is one of the major affects on TCP performance in wireless networks and MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Network). To determine the best TCP variant from mobility point of view, we simulate some TCP variants in real life scenario. This paper addresses the performance of TCP variants such as TCP-Tahoe, TCP-Reno, TCP-New Reno, TCPVegas,TCP-SACK and TCP-Westwood from mobility point of view.The scenarios presented in this paper are supported by Zone routing Protocol (ZRP) with integration of random waypoint mobility model in MANET area. The scenario shows the speed of walking person to a vehicle and suited particularly for mountainous and deserted areas. On the basis of simulation, we analyze Round trip time (RTT) fairness, End-to-End delay, control overhead, number of broken links during the delivery of data. Finally analyzed parameters help to find out the best TCP variant.Comment: 09 pages, 09 pages, In proceedings of international conference on 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Conference, At University of Hartford, Connecticut, US

TCP Sintok: Transmission control protocol with delay-based loss detection and contention avoidance mechanisms for mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) consists of mobile devices that are connected to each other using a wireless channel, forming a temporary network without the aid of fixed infrastructure; in which hosts are free to move randomly as well as free to join or leave. This decentralized nature of MANET comes with new challenges that violate the design concepts of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP); the current dominant protocol of the Internet. TCP always infers packet loss as an indicator of network congestion and causes it to perform a sharp reduction to its sending rate. MANET suffers from several types of packet losses due to its mobility feature and contention on wireless channel access and these would lead to poor TCP performance. This experimental study investigates mobility and contention issues by proposing a protocol named TCP Sintok. This protocol comprises two mechanisms: Delay-based Loss Detection Mechanism (LDM), and Contention Avoidance Mechanism (CAM). LDM was introduced to determine the cause of the packet loss by monitoring the trend of end-to-end delay samples. CAM was developed to adapt the sending rate (congestion window) according to the current network condition. A series of experimental studies were conducted to validate the effectiveness of TCP Sintok in identifying the cause of packet loss and adapting the sending rate appropriately. Two variants of TCP protocol known as TCP NewReno and ADTCP were chosen to evaluate the performance of TCP Sintok through simulation. The results demonstrate that TCP Sintok improves jitter, delay and throughput as compared to the two variants. The findings have significant implication in providing reliable data transfer within MANET and supporting its deployment on mobile device communication

MANETs: Internet Connectivity and Transport Protocols

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes connected together over a wireless medium, which self-organize into an autonomous multi-hop wireless network. This kind of networks allows people and devices to seamlessly internetwork in areas with no pre-existing communication infrastructure, e.g., disaster recovery environments. Ad hoc networking is not a new concept, having been around in various forms for over 20 years. However, in the past only tactical networks followed the ad hoc networking paradigm. Recently, the introduction of new technologies such as IEEE 802.11, are moved the application field of MANETs to a more commercial field. These evolutions have been generating a renewed and growing interest in the research and development of MANETs. It is widely recognized that a prerequisite for the commercial penetration of the ad hoc networking technologies is the integration with existing wired/wireless infrastructure-based networks to provide an easy and transparent access to the Internet and its services. However, most of the existing solutions for enabling the interconnection between MANETs and the Internet are based on complex and inefficient mechanisms, as Mobile-IP and IP tunnelling. This thesis describes an alternative approach to build multi-hop and heterogeneous proactive ad hoc networks, which can be used as flexible and low-cost extensions of traditional wired LANs. The proposed architecture provides transparent global Internet connectivity and address autocofiguration capabilities to mobile nodes without requiring configuration changes in the pre-existing wired LAN, and relying on basic layer-2 functionalities. This thesis also includes an experimental evaluation of the proposed architecture and a comparison between this architecture with a well-known alternative NAT-based solution. The experimental outcomes confirm that the proposed technique ensures higher per-connection throughputs than the NAT-based solution. This thesis also examines the problems encountered by TCP over multi-hop ad hoc networks. Research on efficient transport protocols for ad hoc networks is one of the most active topics in the MANET community. Such a great interest is basically motivated by numerous observations showing that, in general, TCP is not able to efficiently deal with the unstable and very dynamic environment provided by multi-hop ad hoc networks. This is because some assumptions, in TCP design, are clearly inspired by the characteristics of wired networks dominant at the time when it was conceived. More specifically, TCP implicitly assumes that packet loss is almost always due to congestion phenomena causing buffer overflows at intermediate routers. Furthermore, it also assumes that nodes are static (i.e., they do not change their position over time). Unfortunately, these assumptions do not hold in MANETs, since in this kind of networks packet losses due to interference and link-layer contentions are largely predominant, and nodes may be mobile. The typical approach to solve these problems is patching TCP to fix its inefficiencies while preserving compatibility with the original protocol. This thesis explores a different approach. Specifically, this thesis presents a new transport protocol (TPA) designed from scratch, and address TCP interoperability at a late design stage. In this way, TPA can include all desired features in a neat and coherent way. This thesis also includes an experimental, as well as, a simulative evaluation of TPA, and a comparison between TCP and TPA performance (in terms of throughput, number of unnecessary transmissions and fairness). The presented analysis considers several of possible configurations of the protocols parameters, different routing protocols, and various networking scenarios. In all the cases taken into consideration TPA significantly outperforms TCP