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Performance Characteristics

The throughput of the modified TCP is observed to be an improvement over the unmodified TCP (Refer to the plots). It may be noticed that the wireless noise is sufficient cause around a mere 20% throughput. The plots show that in the modified TCP (the darker plot) packet transfer occur in larger bursts than the unmodifed TCP case. This is in tune with our expectations, since the congestion window for our modified TCP is prevented from decreasing to 1 MSS each time a packet is lost due to channel noise. The same is not true for unmodified TCP.

Also, the graphs show a very periodic zig-zag pattern which basically follows the periodic packet loss due to the wireless channel error. The congestion window size in unmodified TCP drops to one in a periodic fashion, as a packet is lost by the wireless channel. Hence, there are no large bursts of packet transmissions in the unmodified TCP graphs.



Suman Banerjee
Wed May 21 00:53:15 EDT 1997