Multi-service link layer enhancements for the wireless Internet

Although TCP and UDP application performance over wireless links may be substantially improved via link layer error recovery, different schemes are appropriate for each application class. We present a multi-service link layer architecture that simultaneously enhances the performance of diverse applications by supporting multiple error recovery mechanisms in parallel. We simulated concurrent file transfers and WWW browsing over TCP and continuous media distribution over UDP using our architecture. The results show that each application achieves similar improvements as when it operates alone over its preferred scheme, despite the parallel execution of diverse applications.