A method for reducing TCP latency due to consecutive packet losses in mobile networks

In this paper, we propose a method for reducing the transmission control protocol (TCP) latency due to consecutive packet losses in mobile networks. Mobile networks are becoming increasingly popular and used in the same sense as fixed networks. However, insufficient attention is directed toward the problem with mobile networks, i.e., long latency due to an inappropriate TCP retransmission mechanism. In the proposed method, a sender detects the start and end of burst packet losses and retransmits right after the endpoint. To detect the endpoint, the sender periodically sends a small probe packet during the waiting state. By the proposed method, latency decreased without increasing traffic load in 70% of sample cases compared with the conventional method.