Improving End-To-End Performance in Reconfigurable Networks through Dynamic Setting of TCP Parameters

In the next future, several wireless technologies will coexist and users will require to gain wireless access at any time through the most convenient technology using the same terminal. As a result, terminals will make handover between different access solutions, which we call inter-Reference Environment (RE) handovers. This involves the concept of reconfigurability: terminals must reconfigure their internal parameters to adapt their behavior to the new RE. However, in this scenarios there are more severe problems for TCP-based data services where compared to homogeneous wireless systems. In fact, the low Mobile IP performance causes long periods of terminal unreachability. Besides, when the reference environment changes the end-to-end path changes as well and what TCP learned in terms of round trip time and available bandwidth is not valid anymore. In this paper solutions to improve TCP performance in reconfigurable networks are introduced. The proposed solutions are based on appropriate setting of the maximum segment size (MSS) and modifications to TCP algorithm which are triggered on the following of an inter-RE handover. Performance results show that the proposed algorithms dramatically increase TCP performance.