Title
TCP Fairness Issues in IEEE 802.11 Networks: Problem Analysis and Solutions Based on Rate Control
Abstract
In this paper, we study the problem of maintaining fairness for TCP connections in wireless local area networks (WLANs) based upon the IEEE 802.11 standard. Current implementations of 802.11 use the so-called distributed coordination function (DCF), which provides similar medium access priority to all stations. Although this mode of operation ensures fair access to the medium at the MAC level, it does not provide any provisions for ensuring fairness among the TCP connections. TCP unfairness may result in significant degradation of performance leading to users perceiving unsatisfactory quality of service. We propose and analyze two solutions that are capable of enabling TCP fairness with minimal additional complexity. The proposed solutions are based on utilizing a rate-control mechanism in two modes: static or adaptive. They do not require modifying existing standards at the MAC or network layers. Hence, they are fully compatible with existing devices. Our performance analysis results prove the efficaciousness of our proposed solutions in achieving TCP fairness compared to existing approaches. We have, also, implemented the proposed solutions in an ad-hoc experimental test-bed, and performed measurements to demonstrate the validity of our approach and results
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/TWC.2007.348331
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Keywords
Field
DocType
mobile radio,quality of service,transport protocols,wireless LAN,DCF,IEEE 802.11 networks,TCP fairness,distributed coordination function,medium access priority,quality of service,rate-control mechanism,wireless local area networks
H-TCP,Computer network,Distributed coordination function,Transmission Control Protocol,TCP acceleration,Fairness measure,Zeta-TCP,TCP tuning,TCP Friendly Rate Control,Mathematics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
6
4
1536-1276
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
26
3.82
3
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
N. Blefari-Melazzi120019.31
A. Detti254747.83
Habib, I.3364.75
Alessandro Ordine4396.39