A Survey of TCP over Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Ahmad Al Hanbali (1) , Eitan Altman (1) , Philippe Nain (1)

1 MAESTRO - Models for the performance analysis and the control of networks

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) was designed to provide reliable end-to-end delivery of data over unreliable networks. In practice, most TCP deployments have been carefully optimized in the context of wired networks. Ignoring the properties of wireless Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) can lead to TCP implementations with poor performance. In order to adapt TCP to MANET environment, improvements have been proposed in the literature to help TCP to differentiate between the different types of losses. Indeed, in MANETs losses are not always due to network congestion, as it is mostly the case in wired networks. In this report, we present an overview of this issue and a detailed analysis of the major factors involved. In particular, we show how TCP can be affected by mobility and lower layers protocols. In addition, we review the main proposals which aim at adapting TCP to MANET environment.

Mots clés: MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS; TCP; ROUTING PROTOCOL; PACKET LOSS; POWER CONSTRAINT; CROSS LAYER

Domaines: Autre [cs.OH]

Ahmad Al Hanbali, Eitan Altman, Philippe Nain. A Survey of TCP over Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. [Research Report] RR-5182, INRIA. 2004. ⟨inria-00071406⟩