On the move with TCP in current and future mobile networks

• Mobile wireless networks constitute an indispensable part of the global Internet, and with TCP the dominating transport protocol on the Internet, it is vital that TCP works equally well over these networks as over wired ones. This paper identifies the performance dependencies by analyzing the responsiveness of TCP NewReno and TCP CUBIC when subject to bandwidth variations related to movements in different directions. The presented evaluation complements previous studies on 4G mobile networks in two important ways: It primarily focuses on the behavior of the TCP congestion control in medium- to high-velocity mobility scenarios, and it not only considers the current 4G mobile networks, but also low latency configurations that move towards the overall potential delays in 5G networks. The paper suggests that while both CUBIC and NewReno give similar goodput in scenarios where the radio channel continuously degrades, CUBIC gives a significantly better goodput in scenarios where the radio channel quality continuously increases. This is due to CUBIC probing more aggressively for additional bandwidth. Important for the design of 5G networks, the obtained results also demonstrate that very low latencies are capable of equalizing the goodput performance of different congestion control algorithms. Only in low latency scenarios that combine both large fluctuations of available bandwidths and a mobility pattern in which the radio channel quality continuously increases can some performance differences be noticed.

Subject headings

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Telecommunications (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Telekommunikation (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Computer Sciences (hsv//eng)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Datavetenskap (datalogi) (hsv//swe)

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap (Datateknik) (hsv//swe)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences (hsv//eng)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Mobile network

4G

5G

TCP

congestion control

NewReno

CUBIC

latency

throughput

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)