IMPLICATIONS ON MOBILITY - TCP: -

➢ While slow start is one of most useful mechanism in a

fixed network, it drastically reduces the efficiency of
the TCP if used in a mobile receiver or sender.

➢ The reason for this is that slow start mechanism may

be initiated for wrong reasons. Missing ACK in case of
mobile nodes is very common which may be due to
mobility or due to any interruption.

➢ Also, error rates, packet loss on wireless links are

order of magnitude and cannot be always
compensated by retransmissions or error correction
mechanisms.

➢ Mobility itself can cause packet loss. There are many

situations when a soft handover is not possible for
mobile end system. This results in loss of packet that
are in transit to the old foreign agent while the nodes
move to the new foreign agent. This loss is nothing to
do with wireless access but it is a rerouting problem.

➢ As already brought out, receipt of the three or more

ACK for the same packet is identified as loss of a single
packet and appropriate action is taken and loss of ACK
for a time that is much more than RTT is identified as
congestion and slow start mechanism is invoked. Both
 these cannot be applied for the Mobile devices as
more often, loss of packet can take place for reason
other than these as well.

➢ Also, for the sake of mobile devices, on cannot change

the TCP protocol that encompasses the inter globe.
Hence new methods were devised that are discussed
below:
Classical TCP
i) Indirect TCP (I-TCP):
This method has been developed based on two
premises.
1. TCP performs poorly together with wireless
links
2. TCP within the fixed network cannot be
changed.
➢ I-TCP segments a TCP connection to a mobile device
into a fixed part and a wireless part. As shown below.
In this, the standard TCP is connected between fixed
host and the foreign agent (Access Point). Whereas the
‘Wireless TCP’ is connected between the Access point
and the Mobile host.

➢ IN this the access point acts as a proxy for both fixed

and mobile nodes. In case of fixed nodes, it is the
mobile node proxy and in case of mobile host, it is the
fixed node proxy. Foreign agent (access point) is
selected as proxy as it controls the mobility of the most
 host. However, one can identify the TCP connection
separation at a special server at the entry point to a
mobile network (e.g. IWF - Inter Working Function in
GSM, GGSN in GPRS etc)

➢ The foreign acts as proxy and relays all data in both

directions. What is important to note in this case is
that the foreign agent itself responds to the receipt of
data from either hosts and send ACKs by itself. In case
the packet is lost in the wireless medium, the fixed
(correspondent) node will not notice this as the ACK is
already sent by the foreign agent. However, the
foreign agent tries to retransmit this packet locally to
maintain reliable data transport. Similarly, while the
mobile node sends data to foreign agent, if it is lost, the
mobile nodes identifies this much faster as the RTT up
to proxy is very much smaller and it retransmits the lost
packet.

➢ IN case of mobility of a mobile to a new access point,

this is intimated to the old access point and the data
are cached. This data is rerouted to new access point
along with the current TCP state such as sequence
number, address, ports etc.

➢ There are several advantages of this methods. these

are:
i) I-TCP does not require any change in the
existing TCP.
 ii) Transmission in the wireless link like lost
packets, cannot propagate into the fixed
network.
iii) With I-TCP, new mechanism can be
introduced in the fixed network.
iv) Partitioning into two connections also allows
the use of different transport layer protocol
between the foreign agent and mobile host.

➢ Some of the disadvantages of the systems are listed

below;
i) End to end semantics of TCP is lost. The
correspondent always assumes that the receiver
has received the packet once it receives the ACKs
which always may not be case.
ii) Increased handover latency may be more
problematic. The old foreign agent needs to
buffer the packet that are destined for the mobile
node till it receives any information regarding its
current position. This may strain the resources of
the foreign agent.
➢ The foreign agent is to be a trusted agent. If the user
applies end to end encryption, the foreign