Improving UDP and TCP performance in mobile ad hoc networks with INSIGNIA

There is a growing need to provide better service differentiation in mobile ad hoc networks; however, this is challenging. These networks are characterized as being multihop in nature where the wireless topology that interconnects mobile hosts/routers can change rapidly in unpredictable ways or remain relatively static over long periods of time. Power and bandwidth constrained, mobile ad hoc networks typically only support best effort communications where the transport protocol´s “goodput” is often lower than the maximum radio transmission rate after encountering the effects of multiple access, fading, noise, and interference. We evaluate three routing protocols with INSIGNIA, an in-band signaling system that supports adaptive reservation-based services in mobile ad hoc networks. INSIGNIA represents a general-purpose approach to delivering quality of service in mobile ad hoc network supporting “operational transparency” between a number of IETF mobile ad hoc network routing protocols that include Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector, Dynamic Source Routing, and the Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm. We evaluate the performance gains delivered when using INSIGNIA with these MANET routing protocols in support of UDP and TCP traffic. The INSIGNIA ns-2 code used for the study reported in this article is available from the Web at comet.columbia.edu/insignia