Adaptation of transport protocols for an IP-micromobility scheme

Abstract

TCP is a reliable connection-oriented transport protocol that performs well in traditional networks. However, in networks with wireless and other lossy links the protocol suffers from losses and delays due to frequent handoffs like in wireless networks running mobile IP. Many micromobility protocols have been proposed to reduce handoff latency and the load on the network when a mobile host moves among small wireless cells. In this paper, the performance of several TCP and UDP schemes over one of these protocols, MMP (multicast for mobility protocol), is compared and improvements to TCP in a multiple handoff network are proposed. The simulation results are presented using the Network Simulator-ns2 and different metrics for comparison. Our results show that the number of UDP packets lost is reduced when using MMP instead of mobile IP in a micromobility environment and that TCP provides better throughput performance for a traditional scheme like Tahoe TCP when it is adapted to the conditions of the network.