Identification of Packet Losses in TCP Over Wired & Wireless Networks

We propose a robust end-to-end loss differentiation scheme to identify the packet losses due to congestion for TCP connections over wired/wireless networks. We use the measured RTT values in determining whether the cause of packet loss is due to congestion over wired path or regular bit errors over wireless paths. The classification should be as accurate as possible to achieve high throughput and maximum fairness for the TCP connections sharing the wired/wireless paths. The accuracies of previous schemes in the literature depends on varying network parameters such as RTT, buffer size, amount of cross traffic, wireless loss rate and congestion loss rate. The proposed scheme is robust in that the accuracy remains rather stable under varying network parameters. The basic idea behind our scheme is to set the threshold for the classification to be a function of the minimum RTT and the current sample RTT, so that it may automatically adapt itself to current congestion level. When the congestion level of the path is estimated to be low, the threshold for a packet loss to be classified as a congestion loss is increased. This avoids unnecessary halving of the congestion window on packet loss due to regular bit errors over wireless path and hence improves the TCP throughput. When the congestion level of the path is estimated to be high, the threshold for a packet loss to be classified as a congestion loss not to miss any congestion loss is decreased and hence improves the TCP fairness.