TCP Fairness Issues in IEEE 802.11 Networks: Problem Analysis and Solutions Based on Rate Control

• Published in: IEEE transactions on wireless communications Vol. 6; no. 4; pp. 1346 - 1355
• Main Authors: Blefari-Melazzi, N., Detti, A., Habib, I., Ordine, A., Salsano, S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ IEEE 01.04.2007; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Access methods and protocols, osi model; Applied sciences; Business and industry local networks; Degradation; Delay; Effectiveness; Exact sciences and technology; Internet; Joints; Local area networks; Networks; Networks and services in france and abroad; Operation, maintenance, reliability; Performance analysis; Performance evaluation; Quality of service; Search engines; Stations; Systems, networks and services of telecommunications; TCP (protocol); Telecommunication traffic; Telecommunications; Telecommunications and information theory; Teleprocessing networks. Isdn; Teletraffic; Testing; Wireless communication; Wireless LAN; Access control; Performance evaluation; Wireless LAN; Flow rate regulation; Wireless telecommunication; Transmission protocol; rate limiter; Equity; Transmission control protocol; Teletraffic; Implementation; Degradation; Traffic management; WirelessLAN; Traffic control; IEEE standards; TCP fairness; Service quality; Limiter
• ISSN: 1536-1276; 1558-2248
• DOI: 10.1109/TWC.2007.348331

In this paper, we study the problem of maintaining fairness for TCP connections in wireless local area networks (WLANs) based upon the IEEE 802.11 standard. Current implementations of 802.11 use the so-called distributed coordination function (DCF), which provides similar medium access priority to all stations. Although this mode of operation ensures fair access to the medium at the MAC level, it does not provide any provisions for ensuring fairness among the TCP connections. TCP unfairness may result in significant degradation of performance leading to users perceiving unsatisfactory quality of service. We propose and analyze two solutions that are capable of enabling TCP fairness with minimal additional complexity. The proposed solutions are based on utilizing a rate-control mechanism in two modes: static or adaptive. They do not require modifying existing standards at the MAC or network layers. Hence, they are fully compatible with existing devices. Our performance analysis results prove the efficaciousness of our proposed solutions in achieving TCP fairness compared to existing approaches. We have, also, implemented the proposed solutions in an ad-hoc experimental test-bed, and performed measurements to demonstrate the validity of our approach and results