Overcoming TCP Degradation in the Presence of Multiple Intermittent Link Failures Utilizing Intermediate Buffering

<p>It is well documented that assumptions made in the popular Transmission Control Protocol's (TCP) development while essential in the highly reliable wired environment are incompatible with today's wireless network realities in what we refer to as a challenged environment. Challenged environments severely degrade the capability of TCP to establish and maintain a communication connection with reasonable throughput. This thesis proposes and implements an intermediate buffering scheme implemented at the transport layer which serves as a TCP helper protocol for use in network routing equipment to overcome short and bursty but regular link failures. Moreover the implementation requires no modifications to existing TCP implementations at communicating nodes and integrates well with existing routing equipment. In a simulated six-hop network with five modified routers supporting four challenged links each with only 60% availability TCP connections are reliably established and maintained despite the poor link availability whereas 94% fail using standard routing equipment i.e. without the TCP helper protocol.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p>