Insights into the Design of Congestion Control Protocols for Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh Networks

The widespread deployment of multi-hop wireless mesh networks will depend on the performance seen by the user. Unfortunately, the most predominant transport protocol, TCP, performs poorly over such networks, even leading to starvation in some topologies. In this work, we characterize the root causes of starvation in 802.11 scheduled multi-hop wireless networks via simulations. We analyze the performance of three categories of transport protocols. (1) end-to-end protocols that require implicit feedback (TCP SACK), (2) Explicit feedback based protocols (XCP and VCP) and (3) Open-loop protocol (UDP). We ask and answer the following questions in relation to these protocols: (a) Why does starvation occur in different topologies? Is it intrinsic to TCP or, in general, to feedback-based protocols? or does it also occur in the case of open-loop transfers such as CBR over UDP? (a) What is the role of application behavior on transport layer performance in multi-hop wireless mesh networks? (b) Is sharing congestion in the wireless neighborhood essential for avoiding starvation? (c) For explicit feedback based transport protocols, such as XCP and VCP, what performance can be expected when their capacity estimate is inaccurate? Based on the insights derived from the above analysis, we design a rate-based protocol called VRate that uses the two ECN bits for conveying load feedback information. VRate achieves near optimal rates when configured with the correct capacity estimate

{EcnLD}, {ECN Loss Differentiation} to optimize the performance of transport protocols on wireless networks

International audienceOne major yet unsolved problem in wired-cum-wireless networks is the classification of losses, which can be due either to wireless temporary interferences or to network congestion. The transport protocol response to losses has to be different for these two cases. If the transmission uses existing protocols like TCP, the losses will always be classified as congestion losses by the data sender, causing reduced throughput. In wired networks, ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) can be used to control the congestion through active queue management such as RED (Random Early Detection). It can also be used to resolve the transport protocol misreaction on wireless networks. This paper proposes a loss differentiation method (EcnLD), based on ECN signaling and RTT, and applied to TCPlike. TCPlike is one of the two current congestion controls present in the new transport protocol DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol). Our results indicate that EcnLD is a good approach to optimize congestion control and therefore increase the performance of transport protocols over wireless networks

TCP over CDMA2000 Networks: A Cross-Layer Measurement Study

Modern cellular channels in 3G networks incorporate sophisticated power control and dynamic rate adaptation which can have significant impact on adaptive transport layer protocols, such as TCP. Though there exists studies that have evaluated the performance of TCP over such networks, they are based solely on observations at the transport layer and hence have no visibility into the impact of lower layer dynamics, which are a key characteristic of these networks. In this work, we present a detailed characterization of TCP behavior based on cross-layer measurement of transport layer, as well as RF and MAC layer parameters. In particular, through a series of active TCP/UDP experiments and measurement of the relevant variables at all three layers, we characterize both, the wireless scheduler and the radio link protocol in a commercial CDMA2000 network and assess their impact on TCP dynamics. Somewhat surprisingly, our findings indicate that the wireless scheduler is mostly insensitive to channel quality and sector load over short timescales and is mainly affected by the transport layer data rate. Furthermore, with the help of a robust correlation measure, Normalized Mutual Information, we were able to quantify the impact of the wireless scheduler and the radio link protocol on various TCP parameters such as the round trip time, throughput and packet loss rate

Improving the performance of SCTP Transport Protocol over wireless networks

[Abstract]: Stream Control Transmission Protocol(SCTP) is a reliable transport protocol combining the advantages of TCP and UDP. SCTP has many desirable features including multihoming, multistreaming, and partial data reliability. These features have made SCTP perform much more effectively in multimedia networking applications. They have also worked better in wireless environment which traditional transport protocols are ineffective and cumbersome. Before the transmission, an application using SCTP needs to establish an association between the client and the server. The establishment of association requires a number which will be used to create multiple streams. However, SCTP has not specified a method or suggested any ideas of determine the number. In our paper, we focus on the performance of SCTP protocol over the wireless networks. The ideas is to extend the SCTP with a process of determining an optimal number prior to the association establishing. We examine the modified SCTP on a simulated wireless networks, and the experiment results of simulation using NS2 have shown the modified SCTP is feasible and also demonstrated the modified SCTP’s superiority of performance over TCP and UDP over the wireless networks

Wireless Sensor Network Transport Protocol - A State of the Art

In this article, we present a survey of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) existing Transport Protocols. Wehave evaluated the design concepts of different protocols based on congestion control, reliability support and source traffic priority support. Then we draw the concluding remarks, while highlighting up-and-coming research challenges for WSN transport protocols, which should be addressed further in prospective designs

Design and evaluation of protocols for wireless networks taking into account the interaction between transport and network layers.

We recognized two important shortcomings of the current TCP protocol: misinterpretation of delayed acknowledgments and competition among different TCP flows. In this dissertation, we propose to address these two issues by a use of novel protocol that uses immediate and delayed acknowledgment schemes and provides a coordination mechanism among independent TCP flows. We also address certain important issues that are related to the implementation of our proposed protocol: can we maintain the end-to-end semantics of TCP? Are there additional benefits that can be harvested if intermediate nodes with TCP protocol can be used? (Abstract shortened by UMI.)The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) provides end-to-end data reliability and is the primary transport layer protocol for many applications such as email, web access, and file transfer. There has been a plethora of research activity that aims to improve the performance of TCP both in wired and wireless networks. Protocols for the computer networks have been very structured and layered to allow for easier upgrades and maintenance. The network layer protocol (e.g. IP) is independent and below the transport layer protocol (e.g. TCP). Our main goal in this dissertation is to examine the interaction and dynamics between the network layer protocols and TCP in the wireless environment.Towards this goal, we examined the network layer protocols in one-hop wireless (e.g. cellular networks) and multi-hop wireless, e.g. distributed Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) networks. For each of these networks we, for the first time, propose transport layer protocols that take into account the interaction between the network layer and transport layer. For the one-hop wireless networks we have investigated analytical methods to determine the buffer requirements at base stations and estimate disruption time which is the time between two packet arrivals at the mobile host. We will show that the estimation of buffer requirements and disruption time is not only dependent on the wireless TCP scheme used, but also its interaction with the underlying network protocol. We also propose a comprehensive study of the effectiveness of wireless TCP and network protocols taking into account different networking environments that is decided on many factors such as mobility of senders and receivers, simplex and duplex communication among communicating peers, connection oriented and connection less communication at the network layer, rerouting schemes used after movement, and with and without hint handoff schemes

Enhanced transport protocols

The book presents mechanisms, protocols, and system architectures to achieve end-to-end Quality-of-Service (QoS) over heterogeneous wired/wireless networks in the Internet. Particular focus is on measurement techniques, traffic engineering mechanisms and protocols, signalling protocols as well as transport protocol extensions to support fairness and QoS. It shows how those mechanisms and protocols can be combined into a comprehensive end-to-end QoS architecture to support QoS in the Internet over heterogeneous wired/wireless access networks. Finally, techniques for evaluation of QoS mechanisms such as simulation and emulation are presented. The book is aimed at graduate and post-graduate students in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering with focus in data communications and networking as well as for professionals working in this area

Congestion control protocols in wireless sensor networks: A survey

The performance of wireless sensor networks (WSN) is affected by the lossy communication medium, application diversity, dense deployment, limited processing power and storage capacity, frequent topology change. All these limitations provide significant and unique design challenges to data transport control in wireless sensor networks. An effective transport protocol should consider reliable message delivery, energy-efficiency, quality of service and congestion control. The latter is vital for achieving a high throughput and a long network lifetime. Despite the huge number of protocols proposed in the literature, congestion control in WSN remains challenging. A review and taxonomy of the state-of-the-art protocols from the literature up to 2013 is provided in this paper. First, depending on the control policy, the protocols are divided into resource control vs. traffic control. Traffic control protocols are either reactive or preventive (avoiding). Reactive solutions are classified following the reaction scale, while preventive solutions are split up into buffer limitation vs. interference control. Resource control protocols are classified according to the type of resource to be tuned. © 2014 IEEE