LHP: an end-to-end reliable transport protocol over wireless data networks

The next generation wireless networks are posited to support large scale data applications. Implementing end-to-end TCP in such networks faces two problems. First, it is well known that TCP can not distinguish packet losses due to link failures and that due to network congestion. Second, TCP congestion control mechanism does not deal effectively with large amount of out-of-order packet retransmissions; this problem has received less attention in literature. In this paper, we present solutions to both these problems. In particular, we present a link-layer header protection (LHP) protocol, which implements explicit loss notification (ELN) in a simple, scalable manner, addressing the first problem. We also modify the congestion control mechanism to incorporate knowledge of ELN and packet loss pattern into retransmission decisions, solving the second problem. We combine both these solutions with TCP to present scalable, reliable end-to-end wireless transport protocol.