Rethinking TCP flow control for smartphones and tablets

The focus of this work is to study the efficacy of TCP’s flow control algorithm on mobile devices. Specifically, we identify the design limitations of the algorithm when operating in environments, such as smartphones and tablets, where flow control assumes greater importance because of device resource limitations. We then propose an adaptive flow control (AFC) algorithm for TCP that relies not just on the available buffer space but also on the application read-rate at the receiver. We show, using NS2 simulations, that AFC can provide considerable performance benefits over classical TCP flow control.