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Evaluation of a Split-Connection Mobile Transport Protocol

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Abstract

A performance evaluation is presented for a split-connection protocol for wireless Internet access which is denoted Split-Connection Mobile Tranport Protocol (SCMTP). It uses the general approach of the previously introduced Mobile End Transport Protocol (METP) but with differences that include a wireless-link channel-access protocol better matched with current cellular networks and more general ARQ methods for error control in the wireless link. In common with METP, SCMTP uses a standard TCP protocol on the wire-line connection and isolates the data flow in the wire-line network from the effect of wireless packet errors.

Performance is considered for the important case of a single SCMTP split connection between a fixed host and a mobile host with heavy downlink traffic from the fixed host to the mobile host. It is shown for these conditions that if the wire-line packet-error rate is small, a steady state is reached in which the connection's data flow in the wire-line network remains under the control of the receiver-advertised window of the TCP entity at the base station. Performance is evaluated for the steady-state operation of the SCMTP protocol, and relationships are established between the key properties of the split connection and the end-to-end performance of the connection.

It is shown that for heavy downlink traffic, the delay in the wire-line part of the connection does not affect steady-state throughput if the receiver buffer is sized appropriately. It is also shown that use of the go-back-N ARQ protocol on the wireless link yields better performance than the stop-and-wait ARQ protocol, although the performance with go-back-N ARQ is more sensitive to the characteristics of the wireless channel. It is shown that under a broad range of conditions, SCMTP with go-back-N ARQ provides nearly optimal utilization of the capacity of the wireless link.

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Correspondence to Daniel L. Noneaker.

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Xie, F., Hammond, J.L. & Noneaker, D.L. Evaluation of a Split-Connection Mobile Transport Protocol. Wireless Networks 9, 593–603 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025904417892

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025904417892

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