Chapter ten

TCP IN WIRELESS
NETWORKS
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Content of Lecture ten

Subject Page
10.1 Introduction 3
10.2 Comparison between OSI and TCP/IP Protocol 3-4
Suite

10.3 Layers in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite 5-6

10.4 Traditional TCP 5
10.5 congestion control 6-7
10.5.1 slow start and congestion avoidance 7-8
10.5.2 fast retransmit/fast recovery 8-9
10.6 problems with traditional TCP in wireless 9
environments
10.7 classical TCP improvements 10
10.7.1 indirect TCP(I-TCP) 10-12
10.7.2 snooping TCP 12-15
10.7.3 mobile TCP 15-16
10.7.4 fast retransmit/fast recovery 16-17
10.7.5 transmission/time-out freezing 17-18
10.7.6 selective retransmission 18
10.7.7 transaction-oriented TCP 18-19
10.6 impact of mobility on TCP 20-21
References 22
Chapter ten 3

Chapter ten
10.1 Introduction
TCP/IP Short for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, TCP/IP
is a set of rules (protocols) governing communications among all computers
on the Internet.

It is named from two of the most important protocols in it: The Transmission
Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first
two networking protocols defined in this standard. Today's IP networking
represents a synthesis of several developments that began to evolve in the
1960s and 1970s, namely the Internet and LANs (Local Area Networks),
which emerged in the mid- to late-1980s, together with the advent of the
World Wide Web in the early 1990s.

The TCP/IP protocol was developed prior to the OSI model. Therefore, the
layers in the TCP/IP protocol suite do not match exactly with those in the
OSI model. The original TCP/IP protocol suite was defined as four software
layers built upon the hardware. Today, however, TCP/IP is thought of as a
five-layer model with the layers named similarly to the ones in the OSI
model. Figure 10.1 shows both configurations.

Figure 10.1: Layers in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite

10.2 Comparison between OSI and TCP/IP Protocol Suite

When we compare the two models, we find that two layers, session and
presentation, are missing from the TCP/IP protocol suite. These two layers
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were not added to the TCP/IP protocol suite after the publication of the OSI
model. The application layer in the suite is usually considered to be the
combination of three layers in the OSI model, as shown in Figure10.2.

Figure 10.2: TCP/IP and OSI model

Two reasons were mentioned for this decision. First, TCP/IP has more than
one transport-layer protocol. Some of the functionalities of the session layer
are available in some of the transport layer protocols. Second, the
application layer is not only one piece of software. Many applications can
be developed at this layer. If some of the functionalities mentioned in the
session and presentation are needed for a particular application, it can be
included in the development of that piece of software.
TCP/IP is a hierarchical protocol made up of interactive modules, each of
which provides a specific functionality, but the modules are not necessarily
interdependent. Whereas the OSI model specifies which functions belong to
each of its layers, the layers of the TCP/IP protocol suite contain relatively
independent protocols that can be mixed and matched, depending on the
needs of the system. The term hierarchical means that each upper level
protocol is supported by one or more lower level protocols.
10.3 Layers in the TCP/IP Protocol Suite
We briefly discuss the purpose of each layer in the TCP/IP protocol suite.

 Physical Layer: Contains all the functions needed to carry the bit
stream over a physical medium to another system
Chapter ten 5

 Data Link Layer: Organizes the bit stream into a data unit called a
“frame” and delivers the frame to an adjacent system.
 Network Layer: Delivers data in the form of a packet from source to
destination, across as many links as necessary, to non-adjacent
systems.
 Transport Layer: Concerned with process-to-process delivery of
information.
 Application Layer: Concerned with differences in internal
representation, user interfaces, and anything else that the user
requires.
10.4 Traditional TCP
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the
Internet protocol suite, often simply referred to as TCP/IP. TCP is reliable;
guarantees in-order delivery of data and incorporates congestion control
and flow control mechanisms.

TCP supports many of the Internet's most popular application protocols and
resulting applications, including the World Wide Web, e-mail, File Transfer
Protocol and Secure Shell. In the Internet protocol suite, TCP is the
intermediate layer between the Internet layer and application layer.

The major responsibilities of TCP in an active session are to:

• Provide reliable in-order transport of data: to not allow losses of

data.
• Control congestions in the networks: to not allow degradation of
the network performance,
• Control a packet flow between the transmitter and the receiver:
to not exceed the receiver's capacity.
TCP uses a number of mechanisms to achieve high performance and avoid
'congestion collapse', where network performance can fall by several orders
of magnitude. These mechanisms control the rate of data entering the
network, keeping the data flow below a rate that would trigger collapse.
There are several mechanisms of TCP that influence the efficiency of TCP in
a mobile environment. Acknowledgments for data sent, or lack of
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acknowledgments, are used by senders to implicitly interpret network
conditions between the TCP sender and receiver.

10.5 Congestion control

A transport layer protocol such as TCP has been designed for fixed
networks with fixed end-systems. Data transmission takes place using
network adapters, fiber optics, copper wires, special hardware for routers
etc. This hardware typically works without introducing transmission errors.
If the software is mature enough, it will not drop packets or flip bits, so if a
packet on its way from a sender to a receiver is lost in a fixed network, it is
not because of hardware or software errors. The probable reason for a
packet loss in a fixed network is a temporary overload some point in the
transmission path, i.e., a state of congestion at a node.

Congestion may appear from time to time even in carefully designed

networks. The packet buffers of a router are filled and the router cannot
forward the packets fast enough because the sum of the input rates of
packets destined for one output link is higher than the capacity of the output
link. The only thing a router can do in this situation is to drop packets. A
dropped packet is lost for the transmission, and the receiver notices a gap in
the packet stream. Now the receiver does not directly tell the sender which
packet is missing, but continues to acknowledge all in-sequence packets up
to the missing one.

The sender notices the missing acknowledgement for the lost packet and
assumes a packet loss due to congestion. Retransmitting the missing packet
and continuing at full sending rate would now be unwise, as this might only
increase the congestion. Although it is not guaranteed that all packets of the
TCP connection take the same way through the network, this assumption
holds for most of the packets. To mitigate congestion, TCP slows down the
transmission rate dramatically. All other TCP connections experiencing the
same congestion do exactly the same so the congestion is soon resolved. This
cooperation of TCP connections in the internet is one of the main reasons
for its survival as it is today. Using UDP is not a solution, because the
throughput is higher compared to a TCP connection just at the beginning.
As soon as everyone uses UDP, this advantage disappears. After that,
Chapter ten 7

congestion is standard and data transmission quality is unpredictable. Even

under heavy load, TCP guarantees at least sharing of the bandwidth.

Figure 10.3: TCP congestion control

In October 1986 the Internet had its first congestion collapse. The end hosts
transmitted more data than the routers were able to handle, and did not
lower the transmission rate even though many packets were lost. Hence the
congested state persisted in the routers. Since then TCP has been extended
with mechanisms for congestion control. Today all TCP implementations are
required to use algorithms for congestion control, namely, slow start,
congestion avoidance, fast retransmit, and fast recovery.

10.5.1 Slow Start and Congestion Avoidance

The purpose of slow start and congestion avoidance is to control the
transmission rate in order to prevent congestion from occurring. TCP is
described as a self-clocking protocol, since the transmission rate is
determined by the rate of incoming acknowledgments. The sender only
transmits segments when acknowledgments are received.
TCP estimates the available capacity in the network by gradually increasing
the number of outstanding segments. The congestion window (CWND) limits
the amount of data the TCP sender can inject into the network. The initial
value of the congestion window is between one and four segments. The
receiver window (RWND) indicates the maximum number of bytes the
receiver can accept. The value of the RWND is advertised to the sender,
since the receiver includes RWND in the segments going back to the sender.
At any moment, the amount of outstanding data is limited by the minimum of
the CWND and the RWND.
In the slow start phase, the congestion window is increased by one segment
for each acknowledgment received, which gives an exponential increase of
the congestion window. Slow start is used for newly established connections
and after retransmission due to timeout.
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Figure 10.4: Slow start and congestion avoidance when timeout occurs

The congestion window is increased until a timeout occurs or a threshold

value (ssthresh) is reached. If a timeout occurs, then ssthresh is reduced to
half the amount of outstanding data, the congestion window is reduced to
one full-sized segment, and the slow start phase is entered again. If ssthresh
is reached, then the slow start phase ends and congestion avoidance is
entered instead. During the congestion avoidance phase, the congestion
window is increased by one segment per round trip time, which gives a
linear increase of the congestion window. Figure 10.4 illustrates how the
congestion window is changed in slow start and in congestion avoidance.
As compared to the congestion collapse discussed above, these algorithms
make TCP slow down when packets are lost. With less packets injected into
the network, the load on the routers decreases and packets can flow through.
10.5.2 Fast retransmit/fast recovery
The fast retransmit and fast recovery algorithms allow TCP to detect data
loss and perform error recovery before the transmission timer expires in
some situations. The algorithms increase TCP performance, partly due to
the earlier loss detection and retransmission, partly since the transmission
rate is not reduced as much as after timeout. The receipt of
acknowledgements shows that there is no congestion to justify a slow start.
The sender can continue with the current congestion window. The sender
performs a fast recovery from the packet loss. This mechanism can improve
the efficiency of TCP dramatically.
Chapter ten 9

If a segment arrives out of order, the receiver transmits an acknowledgment

for the last segment received in sequence. Since this segment already has
been acknowledged once before, when it was first received, this subsequent
acknowledgment is called a duplicate acknowledgment (dupack). After
receiving three dupacks in a row, the sender concludes that unacknowledged
data that was transmitted before the dupacked segment must have been lost.
Data is retransmitted directly after the receipt of the third dupack (the fourth
acknowledgment) even if the retransmission timer has not expired. After the
retransmission, fast recovery is performed until all lost data is recovered
and the sender receives an acknowledgment which covers new data. First,
the ssthresh is reduced, as after timeout, to half the amount of outstanding
data. And the congestion window is set a higher value, to three full-sized
segments more than ssthresh.
The additional three segments accounts for the three segments which
triggered the receiver to transmit the dupacks. If more dupacks are received,
then the congestion window is increased with one segment for each dupack,
since each dupack indicates that one segment has left the network. When an
acknowledgment for new data is received, then the congestion window is set
to the same value as ssthresh. The effect of this adjustment of the congestion
window after fast retransmit and fast recovery, is that TCP may enter
congestion avoidance instead of slow start, as is done after timeout.

10.6 problems with traditional TCP in wireless environments

 Slow start mechanism in fixed networks decreases the efficiency of
TCP if used with mobile receivers or senders.
 Error rates on wireless links are orders of magnitude higher
compared to fixed fiber or copper. this makes compensation for packet
loss by TCP quite difficult.
 Mobility itself can cause packet loss. There are many situations where
a soft handover from one access point to another is not possible for a
mobile end-system.
 Standard TCP reacts with slow start if acknowledgements
Are missing, which does not help in the case of transmission errors
over wireless links and which does not really help during handover.
This behavior results in a severe performance degradation of an
unchanged TCP if used together with wireless links or mobile nodes.
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10.7 Classical TCP improvements

10.7.1 Indirect TCP (I-TCP)
Indirect TCP segments a TCP connection into a fixed part and a wireless
part. The following figure shows an example with mobile host connected via
a wireless link and an access point to the 'wired' internet where the
correspondent host resides.

Figure 10.5: Indirect TCP segments a TCP connection into two parts

Standard TCP is used between the fixed computer and the access point. No
computer in the internet recognizes any changes to TCP. Instead of the
mobile host, the access point now terminates the standard TCP connection,
acting as a proxy. This means that the access point is now seen as the mobile
host for the fixed host and as the fixed host for the mobile host. Between the
access point and the mobile host, a special TCP, adapted to wireless links, is
used. However, changing TCP for the wireless link is not a requirement. A
suitable place for segmenting the connection is at the foreign agent. As it not
only controls the mobility of the mobile host anyway and can also hand over
the connection to the next foreign agent when the mobile host moves on.
The foreign agent acts as a proxy and relays all data in both directions. If
CH (correspondent host) sends a packet to the MH, the FA (foreign agent)
acknowledges it and forwards it to the MH (mobile host). Mobile host
receives MH acknowledges on successful reception, but this is only used by
the FA (foreign agent). If a packet is lost on the wireless link, CH the
(correspondent host) doesn't observe it and FA tries to retransmit it locally
to maintain reliable data transport.
Chapter ten 11

If the MH (mobile host) sends a packet, the foreign agent acknowledges this
packet and tries to forward it to the correspondent host. If the packet is lost
on the wireless link, the mobile hosts notice this much faster due to the lower
round trip time and can directly retransmit the packet. Packet loss in the
wired network is now handled by the foreign agent.

Figure 10.6: Packet deliveries in I-TCP

Advantages of I-TCP
 No changes in the fixed network necessary, no changes for the hosts
(TCP protocol) necessary, all current optimizations to TCP still work.
 Transmission errors on the wireless link do not spread into the fixed
network.
 Simple to control, mobile TCP is used only for one hop between, e.g.,
a foreign agent and mobile host.
 Therefore, a very fast retransmission of packets is possible, the short
delay on the mobile hop is known.
Disadvantages of I-TCP
 Loss of end-to-end semantics, an acknowledgement to a sender does
now not any longer mean that a receiver really got a packet, foreign
agents might crash.
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 Higher latency possible due to buffering of data within the foreign
agent and forwarding to a new foreign agent.
 Security issue the foreign agent must be trusted entity.
10.7.2 Snooping TCP
The main drawback of I-TCP is the segmentation of the single TCP
connection into two TCP connections, which loses the original end-to-end
TCP semantic. Anew enhancement, which leaves the TCP connection intact
and is completely transparent, is snooping TCP. The main function is to
buffer data close to the mobile host to perform fast local retransmission in
case of packet loss.

Figure 10.7: snooping TCP as a transparent TCP extension

Here, the foreign agent buffers all packets with destination mobile
host and additionally ‘snoops’ the packet flow in both directions to
recognize acknowledgements. The foreign agent buffers every packet
until it receives an acknowledgement from the mobile host. If the FA
does not receive an acknowledgement from the mobile host within a
certain amount of time, either the packet or the acknowledgement has
been lost. Alternatively, the foreign agent could receive a duplicate
ACK which also shows the loss of a packet. Now, the FA retransmits
the packet directly from the buffer thus performing a faster
retransmission compared to the CH. For transparency, the FA does
not acknowledge data to the CH, which would violate end-to-end
semantic in case of a FA failure. The foreign agent can filter the
duplicate acknowledgements to avoid unnecessary retransmissions of
data from the correspondent host. If the foreign agent now crashes,
Chapter ten 13

the time-out of the correspondent host still works and triggers a

retransmission. The foreign agent may discard duplicates of packets
already retransmitted locally and acknowledged by the mobile host.
This avoids unnecessary traffic on the wireless link.
For data transfer from the mobile host with destination
correspondent host, the FA snoops into the packet stream to detect
gaps in the sequence numbers of TCP. As soon as the foreign agent
detects a missing packet, it returns a negative acknowledgement
(NACK) to the mobile host. The mobile host can now retransmit the
missing packet immediately. Reordering of packets is done
automatically at the correspondent host by TCP.

Figure 10.8: Snooping TCP: Packet delivery

Advantages of snooping TCP

 The end-to-end TCP semantic is preserved.
 Most of the enhancements are done in the foreign agent itself which
keeps correspondent host unchanged.
 Handover of state is not required as soon as the mobile host moves to
another foreign agent. Even though packets are present in the buffer,
time out the CH occurs and the packets are transmitted to the new
COA.
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 No problem arises if the new foreign agent uses the enhancement or
not. If not, the approach automatically falls back to the standard
solution.
Disadvantages of snooping TCP
 Snooping TCP does not isolate the behavior of the wireless link as
well as I-TCP. Transmission errors may propagate till CH.
 Using negative acknowledgements between the foreign agent and the
mobile host assumes additional mechanisms on the mobile host. This
approach is no longer transparent for arbitrary mobile hosts.
 Snooping and buffering data may be useless if certain encryption
schemes are applied end-to-end between the correspondent host and
mobile host. If encryption is used above the transport layer, (e.g. SSL\
TLS), snooping TCP can be used.
10.7.3 Mobile TCP
Both I-TCP and snooping TCP does not help much, if a mobile host gets
disconnected. The M-TCP (mobile TCP) approach has the same goals as
I-TCP and snooping TCP: to prevent the sender window from shrinking if
bit errors or disconnection but not congestion cause current problems.
M-TCP wants to improve overall throughput, to lower the delay, to
maintain end-to-end semantics of TCP, and to provide a more efficient
handover. Additionally, M-TCP is especially adapted to the problems
arising from lengthy or frequent disconnections .M-TCP splits the TCP
connection into two parts as I-TCP does. An unmodified TCP is used on
the standard host –supervisory host (SH) connection, while an optimized
TCP is used on the SH-MH connection.

The SH monitors all packets sent to the MH and ACKs returned from the
MH. If the SH does not receive an ACK for some time, it assumes that the
MH is disconnected. It then chokes the sender by setting the sender's
window size to 0.setting the window size to 0 forces the sender to go into
persistent mode, i.e., the state of the sender will not change no matter
how long the receiver is disconnected. This means that the sender will
not try to retransmit data.as soon as the SH (either the old SH or a new
SH) detects connectivity again, it reopens the window of the sender to the
old value. The sender can continue sending at full speed. This mechanism
does not require changes to the sender's TCP. The wireless side uses an
Chapter ten 15

adapted TCP that can recover from packet loss much faster. This
modified TCP does not use slow start, thus, M-TCP needs a bandwidth
manager to implement fair sharing over the wireless link.

Advantages of M-TCP
 It maintains the TCP end-to-end semantics. The SH does not send
any ACK itself but forwards the ACKs from the MH.
 If the MH is disconnected, it avoids useless retransmissions, slow
starts or breaking connections by simply shrinking the sender's
window to 0.
 As no buffering is done as in I-TCP, there is no need to forward
buffers to a new SH. Lost packets will be automatically
retransmitted to the SH.
Disadvantages of M-TCP
 As the SH does not act as proxy as in I-TCP, packet loss on the wireless
link due to bit errors is propagated to the sender. M-TCP assumes low bit
error rates, which is not always a valid assumption.
 A modified TCP on the wireless link not only requires modifications to
the MH protocol software but also new network elements like the
bandwidth manager.

Figure 10.9: M-TCP Architecture.

10.7.4 Fast retransmit/fast recovery
Moving to a new foreign agent can cause packet loss or time out at mobile
hosts or corresponding hosts. TCP concludes congestion and goes into slow
start, although there is no congestion.
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The idea is to artificially force the fast retransmit behavior on the mobile
host and correspondent host side. As soon as the mobile host registers at a
new foreign agent using mobile IP, it starts sending duplicated
acknowledgements to correspondent hosts. The proposal is to send three
duplicates. This force the corresponding host to go into fast retransmit mode
and not to start slow start, i.e., the correspondent host continues to send with
the same rate it did before the mobile host moved to another foreign agent.

As the mobile host may also go into slow start after moving to a new foreign
agent, this approach additionally puts the mobile host into fast retransmit.
The mobile host retransmits all unacknowledged packets using the current
congestion window size without going into slow start.

Advantages of Fast retransmit/fast recovery

 Its simplicity. Only minor changes in the mobile host’s software
already result in a performance increase.
 No foreign agent or correspondent host has to be changed.
Disadvantages of Fast retransmit/fast recovery
 This scheme is the insufficient isolation of packet losses. Forcing fast
retransmission increases the efficiency, but retransmitted packets still
have to cross the whole network between correspondent host and
mobile host. If the handover from one foreign agent to another takes a
longer time, the correspondent host will have already started
retransmission.
 The approach focuses on loss due to handover: packet loss due to
problems on the wireless link is not considered. This approach
requires more cooperation between the mobile IP and TCP layer
making it harder to change one without influencing the other.
10.7.5 Transmission/Time-out Freezing
Often, MAC layer notices connection problems even before the connection is
actually interrupted from TCP point of view and also knows the real reason
for the interruption. The MAC layer can inform the TCP layer of an
upcoming loss of connection or that the current interruption is not caused by
congestion. TCP can now stop sending and 'freezes' the current state of its
congestion window and further timers. If the MAC layer notices the
upcoming interruption early enough, both the mobile and correspondent
Chapter ten 17

host can be informed. With a fast interruption of the wireless link, additional
mechanisms in the access point are needed to inform the correspondent host
of the reason for interruption. Otherwise, the correspondent host goes into
slow start assuming congestion and finally breaks the connection.

As soon as the MAC layer detects connectivity again, it signals TCP that it
can resume operation at exactly the same point where it had been forced to
stop. For TCP time simply does not advance, so no timers expire.

Advantages of Transmission/Time-out Freezing

 It offers a way to resume TCP connections even after long
interruptions of the connection.
 It can be used together with encrypted data as it is independent of
other TCP mechanisms such as sequence no or acknowledgements.
Disadvantages of Transmission/Time-out Freezing
 Lots of changes have to be made in software of MH, CH and FA.
10.7.6 Selective retransmission
A very useful extension of TCP is the use of selective retransmission. TCP
acknowledgements are cumulative, i.e., they acknowledge in-order receipt of
packets up to a certain packet. A single acknowledgement confirms
reception of all packets up to a certain packet. If a single packet is lost, the
sender has to retransmit everything starting from the lost packet (go-back-n
retransmission). This obviously wastes bandwidth, not just in the case of a
mobile network, but for any network.

Using selective retransmission, TCP can indirectly request a selective

retransmission of packets. The receiver can acknowledge single packets, not
only trains of in sequence packets. The sender can now determine precisely
which packet is needed and can retransmit it.

Advantages of selective retransmission

 A sender retransmits only the lost packets. This lowers bandwidth
requirements and is extremely helpful in slow wireless links. The gain
in efficiency is not restricted to wireless links and mobile
environments. Using selective retransmission is also beneficial in all
other networks. However, there might be the minor.
 Much higher efficiency.
 18 TC
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Disadvantages of selective retransmission
 More complex software on the receiver side, because now more
buffers is necessary to resequence data and to wait for gaps to be
filled. But while memory sizes and CPU performance permanently
increase, the bandwidth of the air interface remains almost the same.
Therefore, the higher complexity is no real disadvantage any longer
as it was in the early days of TCP.
10.7.7 Transaction-oriented TCP
Assume an application running on the mobile host that sends a short request
to a server from time to time, which responds with a short message and it
requires reliable TCP transport of the packets. For it to use normal TCP, it
is inefficient because of the overhead involved. Standard TCP is made up of
three phases: setup, data transfer and release. First, TCP uses a three-way
handshake to establish the connection. At least one additional packet is
usually needed for transmission of the request, and requires three more
packets to close the connection via a three-way handshake. So, for sending
one data packet, TCP may need seven packets altogether. This kind of
overhead is acceptable for long sessions in fixed networks, but is quite
inefficient for short messages or sessions in wireless networks. This led to
the development of transaction-oriented TCP (T/TCP). T/TCP can combine
packets for connection establishment and connection release with user data
packets. This can reduce the number of packets down to two instead of
seven.
Chapter ten 19

Figure 10.11: Example TCP connection setup overhead

Advantages of Transaction-oriented TCP

 The obvious advantage for certain applications is the reduction in the
overhead which standard TCP has for connection setup and
connection release.
 Efficiency

Disadvantages of transaction-oriented TCP

 requires changed TCP
 mobility no longer transparent
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Figure 10.12: Overview of classical enhancements to TCP for

mobility: A comparison
10.8 IMPACT OF MOBILITY ON TCP
The use of wireless medium for communication offers unique advantages
that are not possible with the wired networks—the end-host can now move
about since it is not tethered by a wire line. While mobility within a wireless
network is generally handled at the link layer or the network layer, it offers
some challenges to the transport protocol as well. For instance, while
moving from one subnet to another, link-layer associations and possibly,
routing needs to be re-established. During this time, there may be periods
when communication is not possible. In addition, some of the packets may be
lost in transit. While some degradation in performance is to be expected,
TCP’s response to this situation makes matters worse. As discussed earlier,
standard TCP assumes all losses are due to congestion, and its timers are
based on the round trip time and observed variations in it. Loss of packets
due to the absence of a route or sudden increases in delays, result in
triggering the congestion control behavior and reducing the performance.
An additional concern is related to the timer management algorithms in
TCP. After an RTO, when a packet is re-transmitted, the timer value
Chapter ten 21

Is doubled to allow for unexpected changes in network conditions. Each

unsuccessful re-transmission results in this doubling, causing the timer
value to increase exponentially. (A maximum value MAY be placed on RTO
provided it is at least 60 seconds.) In the case where the route is re-
established after a re-transmitted

Packet is lost, and then until the timer (which could have grown to a large
value) expires, the connection remains idle resulting in underutilization of
network resources, as shown in Figure 10.12.

Figure 10.13: Impact of exponential increase in timeout value

Another issue facing TCP during mobility is maintaining active connections.

TCP is an end-to-end protocol that maintains a logical connection between
the two end-hosts. Each connection is identified by a four-tuple <source
address, source port, destination address, destination port>. When a mobile
host moves, if it crosses network boundaries, then its IP address may
change. In such a situation, the TCP end points need to be changed, in order
to maintain active connections.
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References
[1] Jochen H. Schiller "Mobile Communications" Second Edition.

[2] Sumitha Bhandarkar, "TCP in Wireless Networks" Motorola Inc.,

Austin, Texas 78730, USA.

[3] R. Wattenhofer "MOBILE IP AND TCP Mobile Computing"

Summer 2004.
Chapter ten 23

[4] Kevin Brown and Suresh Singh " M-TCP: TCP for Mobile Cellular
Networks" July 29, 1997.

[5] Annika Wennstrom, "Stefan Alfredsson, and Anna Brunstrom" TCP

over Wireless Networks"2004.

[6] TOMASZ IMIELINSKI and HENRY F..KORTH "handbook of

mobile computing"1996.

[7] Behrouz A.Forouzan"TCP/IP Protocol Suite" Fourth Edition.