WLC47-6: TCP Performance Improvement through Inter-layer Enhancement with Mobile IPv6

Abstract

To enable higher layer transparent, Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) hides mobility from the transport layer such as TCP, but it has serious implications on TCP due to mobility issues including the packet loss and the deviation of end-to-end transport delay, which may seriously degrade the transport performance of TCP. This paper explores the impact of MIPv6 on TCP and proposes mobility control mechanisms through the inter-layer enhancement to enable TCP aware of mobility-related behaviours, and react correctly. The changes are made to the network layer and transport layer at the endpoints, and preserve the end-to-end semantics of TCP. One part of the modifications, the inter-layer control module, monitors the mobilityrelated procedures executed by MIPv6 and transfers mobility-related information via the inter-layer control module to TCP. The second part is to response to mobility-related behaviours correctly by TCP to alleviate the problems caused by MIPv6 mobility issues. As we show through performance measurements, our approach significantly improves the transport performance of TCP in MIPv6-based mobile computing environments.