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Rethinking TCP flow control for smartphones and tablets

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Abstract

The focus of this work is to study the efficacy of TCP’s flow control algorithm on mobile devices. Specifically, we identify the design limitations of the algorithm when operating in environments, such as smartphones and tablets, where flow control assumes greater importance because of device resource limitations. We then propose an adaptive flow control (AFC) algorithm for TCP that relies not just on the available buffer space but also on the application read-rate at the receiver. We show, using \(NS2\) simulations, that AFC can provide considerable performance benefits over classical TCP flow control.

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Notes

  1. While a majority of our observations and proposed solutions would aid other environments that are flow control dominated as well, we restrict the focus of this paper to only mobile phones and tablets.

  2. Basic flow control features such as finite-size receive buffer, dynamic advertised window and zero window management were added to the NS2 TCP implementation as NS2 does not support these currently. A configurable application read rate parameter was also added to simulate different application patterns.

  3. Note that any other periodic application profile can be represented as a sum of sine/cosine functions [7].

  4. Note that the TCP ACK sequence number reflects the next expected sequence number.

  5. Assuming the congestion control window is smaller than the receive buffer size. Otherwise, the sender will transmit an entire flow control window of segments.

  6. One byte for the type of option and one for the value.

  7. Basic flow control features such as a finite-size receive buffer, dynamic advertised window and zero window management were added to the NS2 TCP implementation as NS2 does not support these currently. A configurable application read rate parameter was also added to simulate different application patterns.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Shruti Sanadhya & Raghupathy Sivakumar

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  1. Shruti Sanadhya
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  2. Raghupathy Sivakumar
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Correspondence to Shruti Sanadhya.

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Sanadhya, S., Sivakumar, R. Rethinking TCP flow control for smartphones and tablets. Wireless Netw 20, 2063–2080 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-014-0727-9

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