Evaluation of TCP-variants performances in an ad-hoc mobile network

Abstract

The prevalence of wireless networks has become imminent over the past few years, because of the unpredictable nature of their channels; they introduce different types of errors. The congestion control algorithm of the standard transmission control protocol (TCP) assumes packet losses are due to congestion and hence not suitable to handle such channel and transmission errors. This leads to ineffective utilization of the channel bandwidth. A number of TCP variants have been developed to cater for different types of networks. In this paper we evaluate the performances of some of these variants in ad hoc mobile network by simulations using NS-2. These variants are then evaluated in terms of the congestion window evolution and throughput. We showed by the results of our simulations that the BITCP is the most stable with the packet error rates introduced, followed by the TCP-Jersey.