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Effectiveness and issues of congestion control in 802.11g wireless LANs

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Abstract

The current paper presents a collection of experimental data portraying the performance achieved in the wireless setting by several TCP-friendly congestion controls recently proposed in literature. This work is partly motivated by the consideration that the majority of the analytical results in this area are validated by simulation, rather than by field tests. Examining these algorithms in real environments can help verify their actual effectiveness over the wireless Internet. To reach such goal, two representative controls among the so-called window-based TCP-friendly schemes have been implemented, namely, the General Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease (GAIMD) strategy, and the SQuare RooT (SQRT) binomial control; the most representative algorithm among rate-based controls, the TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC), has also been considered. Their TCP-fairness and smoothness have been comprehensively evaluated in an IEEE 802.11g Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). The obtained results show that the GAIMD and SQRT strategies reveal non-negligible scalability and smoothness problems, that markedly limit their performance. It is empirically demonstrated that their “optimal” increase/decrease rules, based on TCP-Reno analytical model, cannot guarantee an adequate performance when GAIMD and SQRT compete with TCP-Sack, a de facto standard for current TCP implementations. TFRC is demonstrated to occasionally behave bewildering: properly tuning one of its congestion control parameters and enhancing the algorithm with a flow-control mechanism result in a definitely fairer share of bandwidth with concurrent TCP flows.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Vignolese 905, 41100, Modena, Italy

    M. Borri, M. Casoni & M. L. Merani

Authors
  1. M. Borri
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  2. M. Casoni
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  3. M. L. Merani
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Correspondence to M. L. Merani.

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Michele Borri received the M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in the academic year 2001–2002 and took a specialisation in Telecommunication Engineering in 2002. His professional activity is currently balanced between researching at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and consulting as a system engineer and network architect. His research interests focus on congestion control and multimedia services in next generation Internet. Michele Borri has been participating to national research projects promoted by the Italian National Research Council (CNR).

Maurizio Casoni is Associate Professor in Telecommunications at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He graduated with honors in Electrical Engineering at the University of Bologna in 1991, with a grant by Telecom Italia and received the Ph.D. degree also in Electrical Engineering from the University of Bologna, in 1995.

In 1995 he was with the Computer Science Department at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, as a research fellow where he worked on ATM broadband switching architectures. He has studied ATM broadband switching architectures and Clos architectures for the design of large photonic switches in the framework of the European Projects ATMOS and KEOPS. He has also investigated the performance of 3rd generation UMTS systems. His current research interests deal with Optical Networking, mainly focusing on Optical Burst Switching, and Satellite Networks. He currently holds the course of Interconnection Systems for undergraduate students and the course of Switching Systems for graduate students of Telecommunications Engineering.

Maria Luisa Merani is currently an associate professor of Telecommunication Networks at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Department of Information Engineering. She is an IEEE Senior member and has served on the Technical Program Committees of several major communication conferences (IEEE ICC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE VTC, APCC). In 2005 she has been technical program cochair of the second IEEE International Symposium in Wireless Communication Systems. In 2007 she will be the Wireless Symposium chair of IEEE Globecom.

At present she is involved in research on congestion control for next generation Internet and on multicast video streaming. Her most recent research interests are related to the area of radio communications, with emphasis on performance evaluation of mobile radio systems, 3G data networking and transport solutions for optical networks.

Maria Luisa Merani received both her M.Sc. (summa cum laude) and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy, in the academic years 1985/86 and 1991/92, respectively. In 1992 she spent one year at the Computer Science Department of the University of California in Los Angeles, CA, USA.

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Borri, M., Casoni, M. & Merani, M.L. Effectiveness and issues of congestion control in 802.11g wireless LANs. Wireless Netw 14, 171–182 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-006-8917-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-006-8917-8

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