Mobile Communication SEMINAR

MOBILE TCP
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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.
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.

Congestion Control

A transport layer protocol such as TCP has been designed for fixed networks with fixed end- systems.
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 insequence 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. 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.

Slow start

TCPs reaction to a missing acknowledgement is quite drastic, but it is necessary to get rid of
congestion quickly. The behavior TCP shows after the detection of congestion is called slow start.
The sender always calculates a congestion window for a receiver.
The start size of the congestion window is one segment (TCP packet). The sender sends one packet
and waits for acknowledgement. If this acknowledgement arrives, the sender increases the congestion
window by one, now sending two packets (congestion window = 2). This scheme doubles the
congestion window every time the acknowledgements come back, which takes one round trip time
(RTT).
This is called the exponential growth of the congestion window in the slow start mechanism.
But doubling the congestion window is too dangerous. The exponential growth stops at the
congestion threshold. As soon as the congestion window reaches the congestion threshold, further
increase of the transmission rate is only linear by adding 1 to the congestion window each time the
acknowledgements come back.
Mobile Communication SEMINAR

Fast retransmit/fast recovery

The congestion threshold can be reduced because of two reasons. First one is if the sender receives
continuous acknowledgements for the same packet. It informs the sender that the receiver has got all
the packets upto the acknowledged packet in the sequence and also the receiver is receiving
something continuously from the sender. The gap in the packet stream is not due to congestion, but a
simple packet loss due to a transmission error. The sender can now retransmit the missing packet(s)
before the timer expires. This behavior is called fast retransmit.
It is an early enhancement for preventing slow-start to trigger on losses not caused by congestion.
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. The other
reason for activating slow start is a time-out due to a missing acknowledgement.
TCP using fast retransmit/fast recovery interprets this congestion in the network and activates the
slow start mechanism.
The advantage of this method is its simplicity. Minor changes in the MHs software results in
performance increase. No changes are required in FA or CH.
The disadvantage of this scheme is insufficient isolation of packet losses. It mainly focuses on
problems regarding Handover. Also it effects the efficiency when a CH
transmits already delivered packets.

CLASSICAL TCP IMPROVEMENTS

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 a mobile host connected via a wireless link and an access point to the wired
internet where the correspondent host resides.

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.
During handover, the buffered packets, as well as the system state (packet sequence number,
acknowledgements, ports, etc), must migrate to the new agent. No new connection may be established
Mobile Communication SEMINAR

for the mobile host, and the correspondent host must not see any changes in connection state. Packet
delivery in I-TCP is shown below:

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
Simple to control, mobile TCP is used only for one hop between, e.g., a foreign agent and mobile
host
1. transmission errors on the wireless link do not propagate into the fixed network
2. therefore, a very fast retransmission of packets is possible, the short delay on the mobile hop s
known
It is always dangerous to introduce new mechanisms in a huge network without knowing exactly
how they behave. New optimizations can be tested at the last hop, without jeopardizing the
stability of the Internet.
It is easy to use different protocols for wired and wireless networks.

Disadvantages of I-TCP

Loss of end-to-end semantics:- an acknowledgement to a sender no longer means that a receiver

really has received a packet, foreign agents might crash.
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 a trusted entity.
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Snooping TCP

TCP connection into two TCP connections, which loses the original end-to-end TCP semantic. A new
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.
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.

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 at the CH occurs and the packets are transmitted
to the new COA.
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-toend
between the correspondent host and mobile host. If encryption is used above the transport layer,
(eg. SSL/TLS), snooping TCP can be used.
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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-toend 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 senders 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 senders TCP.
The wireless side uses an adapted 8TCP 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 senders 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.
Mobile Communication SEMINAR

Transmission/time-out freezing

Often, MAC layer notices connection problems even before the connection is actually interrupted
from a 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
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:

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:
Lots of changes have to be made in software of MH, CH and FA.

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 upto 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. The advantage
of this approach is obvious: a sender retransmits only the lost packets. This lowers bandwidth
requirements and is extremely helpful in slow wireless links. The disadvantage is that a more
complex software on the receiver side is needed. Also more buffer space is needed to resequence data
and to wait for gaps to be filled.

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).
Mobile Communication SEMINAR

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. The obvious
Advantage for certain applications is the reduction in the overhead which standard TCP has for
connection setup and connection release.
Disadvantage is that it requires changes in the software in mobile host and all correspondent hosts.
This solution does not hide mobility anymore. Also, T/TCP exhibits several security problems.

Classical Enhancements to TCP for mobility: A comparison

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