Mobile Transport Layer

THE TCP/IP PROTOCOL SUITE

The TCP/IP protocol suite maps to a four-layer conceptual model known as the DARPA
model, which was named after the U.S. government agency that initially developed TCP/IP.
The four layers of the DARPA model are: Application, Transport, Internet, and Network
Interface. Each layer in the DARPA model corresponds to one or more layers of the seven-
layer OSI model. Figure shows the architecture of the TCP/IP protocol suite.

The architecture of the TCP/IP protocol suite

The TCP/IP protocol suite has two sets of protocols at the Internet layer:
 IPv4, also known as IP, is the Internet layer in common use today on private intranets
and the Internet.
 IPv6 is the new Internet layer that will eventually replace the existing IPv4 Internet
layer.

Network Interface Layer

The Network Interface layer (also called the Network Access layer) sends TCP/IP packets on
the network medium and receives TCP/IP packets off the network medium. TCP/IP was
designed to be independent of the network access method, frame format, and medium.
Therefore,TCP/IP to communicate across differing network types that use LAN technologies
—such as Ethernet and 802.11 wireless LAN—and WAN technologies—such as Frame
Relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM). By being independent of any specific
network technology, TCP/IP can be adapted to new technologies.
The Network Interface layer of the DARPA model encompasses the Data Link and Physical
layers of the OSI model. The Internet layer of the DARPA model does not take advantage of
sequencing and acknowledgment services that might be present in the Data Link layer of the
OSI model. The Internet layer assumes an unreliable Network Interface layer and that reliable
communications through session establishment and the sequencing and acknowledgment of
packets is the responsibility of either the Transport layer or the Application layer.
Internet Layer
The Internet layer responsibilities include addressing, packaging, and routing functions. The
Internet layer is analogous to the Network layer of the OSI model.
The core protocols for the IPv4 Internet layer consist of the following:
 The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) resolves the Internet layer address to a
Network Interface layer address such as a hardware address.
  The Internet Protocol (IP) is a routable protocol that addresses, routes, fragments, and
reassembles packets.
 The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) reports errors and other information to
help you diagnose unsuccessful packet delivery.
 The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) manages IP multicast groups.

The core protocols for the IPv6 Internet layer consist of the following:
 IPv6 is a routable protocol that addresses and routes packets.
 The Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6) reports errors and other
information to help you diagnose unsuccessful packet delivery.
 The Neighbor Discovery (ND) protocol manages the interactions between
neighboring IPv6 nodes.
 The Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) protocol manages IPv6 multicast groups.

Transport Layer
The Transport layer (also known as the Host-to-Host Transport layer) provides the
Application layer with session and datagram communication services. The Transport layer
encompasses the responsibilities of the OSI Transport layer. The core protocols of the
Transport layer are TCP and UDP.
TCP provides a one-to-one, connection-oriented, reliable communications service. TCP
establishes connections, sequences and acknowledges packets sent, and recovers packets lost
during transmission.
In contrast to TCP, UDP provides a one-to-one or one-to-many, connectionless, unreliable
communications service. UDP is used when the amount of data to be transferred is small
(such as the data that would fit into a single packet), when an application developer does not
want the overhead associated with TCP connections, or when the applications or upper-layer
protocols provide reliable delivery.
TCP and UDP operate over both IPv4 and IPv6 Internet layers.

Application Layer
The Application layer allows applications to access the services of the other layers, and it
defines the protocols that applications use to exchange data. The most widely known
Application layer protocols help users exchange information:
 The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) transfers files that make up pages on the
World Wide Web.
 The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) transfers individual files, typically for an interactive
user session.
 The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) transfers mail messages and attachments.
Additionally, the following Application layer protocols can use and manage TCP/IP
networks:
 The Domain Name System (DNS) protocol resolves a host name, such as
[Link], to an IP address and copies name information between DNS
servers.
 The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a protocol that routers use to exchange
routing information on an IP network.
 The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) collects and exchanges network
management information between a network management console and network
devices such as routers, bridges, and servers.

ARCHITECTURE OF TCP/IP PROTOCOL SYSTEM

A protocol system such as TCP/IP must be responsible for the following tasks:
  Dividing messages into manageable chunks of data that will pass efficiently through the
transmission medium.
 Interfacing with the network adapter hardware.
 Accepting data from an application and passing it to the network.
 Receiving data from the network and passing it to an application.

The TCP/IP protocol system is divided into separate components that theoretically function
independently from one another. Each component is responsible for a piece of the
communication process.
The advantage of this modular design is that it lets vendors easily adapt the protocol software
to specific hardware and operating systems.
The TCP/IP protocol system is subdivided into layered components, each of which performs
specific duties. This model, or stack, comes from the early days of TCP/IP, and it is
sometimes called the TCP/IP model. The official TCP/IP protocol layers and their functions
are described in the following list.

The TCP/IP model’s protocol layers.

 Network Access layer: Provides an interface with the physical network. Formats the
data for the transmission medium and addresses data for the subnet based on physical
hardware addresses. Provides error control for data delivered on the physical network.
 Internet layer: Provides logical, hardware-independent addressing so that data can pass
among subnets with different physical architectures. Provides routing to reduce traffic
and support delivery across the internetwork. (The term internetwork refers to an
interconnected, greater network of local area networks (LANs), such as what you find in
a large company or on the Internet.) Relates physical addresses (used at the Network
Access layer) to logical addresses.
 Transport layer: Provides flow-control, error-control, and acknowledgment services
for the internetwork. Serves as an interface for network applications.
 Application layer: Provides applications for network troubleshooting, file transfer,
remote control, and Internet activities. Also supports the network application
programming interfaces (APIs) that enable programs written for a particular operating
environment to access the network.

TERMINOLOGIES OF TCP/IP
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet
protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented
the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP. TCP
provides reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery of a stream of octets between
applications running on hosts communicating by an IP network. Major Internet applications
such as the World Wide Web, email, remote administration, and file transfer rely on TCP.
Applications that do not require reliable data stream service may use the User Datagram
Protocol (UDP), which provides a connectionless datagram service that emphasizes
reduced latency over reliability.
INTERNET PROTOCOL (IP):
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the principal communications protocol in the Internet protocol
suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function
enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.
IP has the task of delivering packets from the source host to the destination host solely based
on the IP addresses in the packet headers. For this purpose, IP defines packet structures
that encapsulate the data to be delivered. It also defines addressing methods that are used to
label the datagram with source and destination information.

HYPERTEXT TRANSFER PROTOCOL (HTTP):

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application protocol for distributed,
collaborative, and hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data
communication for the World Wide Web. Hypertext is structured text that uses logical links
(hyperlinks) between nodes containing text.

SIMPLE MAIL TRANSFER PROTOCOL (SMTP):

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard for electronic mail (email)
transmission. First defined by RFC 821in 1982, it was last updated in 2008 with Extended
SMTP additions by RFC 5321, which is the protocol in widespread use today.

SIMPLE NETWORK MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL (SNMP):

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet-standard protocol for
collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for
modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically support SNMP
include cable modems, routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, and more.

FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL (FTP):

The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard network protocol used for the transfer
of computer files from a server to a client using the Client–server model on a computer
network.

INTERNET CONTROL MESSAGE PROTOCOL (ICMP):

The Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) is a supporting protocol in the Internet
protocol suite. It is used by network devices, like routers, to send error messages and
operational information indicating, for example, that a requested service is not available or
that a host or router could not be reached

INTERNET GROUP MANAGEMENT PROTOCOL (IGMP):

The Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) is a communications protocol used
by hosts and adjacent routers on IPv4 networks to establish multicast group memberships.
IGMP is an integral part of IP multicast.
IGMP can be used for one-to-many networking applications such as online streaming
video and gaming, and allows more efficient use of resources when supporting these types of
applications.
ADDRESS RESOLUTION PROTOCOL (ARP):
The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a telecommunication protocol used for
resolution of Internet layer addresses into link layer addresses, a critical function in computer
networks. ARP is used for mapping a network address (e.g. an IPv4 address) to a physical
address like an Ethernet address (also named a MAC address).

REVERSE ADDRESS RESOLUTION PROTOCOL (RARP):

The Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) is an obsolete computer networking
protocol used by a client computer to request its Internet Protocol (IPv4) address from a
computer network, when all it has available is its link layer or hardware address, such as
a MAC address. The client broadcasts the request, and does not need prior knowledge of the
network topology or the identities of servers capable of fulfilling its request.

BOOTSTRAP PROTOCOL (BOOTP):

The Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) is a computer networking protocol used in Internet
Protocol networks to automatically assign an IP address to network devices from a
configuration server. The BOOTP was originally defined in RFC 951.

ROUTER:
A router is a networking device that forwards data packets between computer networks.
Routers perform the traffic directing functions on the Internet. A data packet is typically
forwarded from one router to another router through the networks that constitute
the internetwork until it reaches its destination node.

DOMAIN NAME SYSTEM (DNS)

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical decentralized naming system for
computers, services, or other resources connected to the Internet or a private network. It
associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating
entities.

IP ADDRESS:
An IP address (abbreviation of Internet Protocol address) is an identifier assigned
to each computer and other device (e.g., printer, mobile device, etc.) connected to a TCP/IP
network..An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network
interface identification and location addressing. Its role has been characterized as follows:
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how to
get [Link] header of each IP packet sent over the Internet contains the IP address of both
the destination server and of the sender. Both the source address and the destination address
may be changed in transit by a network address translation device. The sender's IP address
becomes the destination address when the server responds to a client request.

MULTIPURPOSE INTERNET MAIL EXTENSIONS (MIME)

Is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:Text in character sets other
than ASCII

 Non-text attachments: audio, video, images, application programs etc.

 Message bodies with multiple parts
 Header information in non-ASCII character sets
Traditional TCP
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet
protocol suite, often simply referred to as TCP/IP. TCP is reliable, guarantees in-order
delivery of data and incorporates congestion control and flow control mechanisms.

TCP supports many of the Internet's most popular application protocols and resulting
applications, including the World Wide Web, e-mail, File Transfer Protocol and Secure Shell.
In the Internet protocol suite, TCP is the intermediate layer between the Internet layer and
application layer.

The major responsibilities of TCP in an active session are to:

• Provide reliable in-order transport of data: to not allow losses of data.
• Control congestions in the networks: to not allow degradation of the network
performance,
• Control a packet flow between the transmitter and the receiver: to not exceed the
receiver's capacity.

Congestion Control
Congestion may appear from time to time even in carefully designed networks. The packet
buffers of a router are filled and the router cannot forward the packets fast enough because
the sum of the input rates of packets destined for one output link is higher than the capacity of
the output link. The only thing a router can do in this situation is to drop packets.

A dropped packet is lost for the transmission, and the receiver notices a gap in the packet
stream. Now the receiver does not directly tell the sender which packet is missing, but
continues to acknowledge all in-sequence packets up to the missing one. The sender notices
the missing acknowledgement for the lost packet and assumes a packet loss due to
congestion.

Retransmitting the missing packet and continuing at full sending rate would now be unwise,
as this might only increase the congestion. To mitigate congestion, TCP slows down the
transmission rate dramatically. All other TCP connections experiencing the same congestion
do exactly the same so the congestion is soon resolved.

Slow start
TCP’s reaction to a missing acknowledgement is quite drastic, but it is necessary to get rid of
congestion quickly. The TCP shows after the detection of congestion is called slow start. The
sender always calculates a congestion window for a receiver. The start size of the congestion
window is one segment (TCP packet). The sender sends one packet and waits for
acknowledgement. If this acknowledgement arrives, the sender increases the congestion
window by one, now sending two packets (congestion window = 2). This scheme doubles the
congestion window every time the acknowledgements come back, which takes one round trip
time (RTT). This is called the exponential growth of the congestion window in the slow start
mechanism.
But doubling the congestion window is too dangerous. The exponential growth stops at the
congestion threshold. As soon as the congestion window reaches the congestion threshold,
further increase of the transmission rate is only linear by adding 1 to the congestion window
each time the acknowledgements come back.

Linear increase continues until a time-out at the sender occurs due to a missing
acknowledgement, or until the sender detects a gap in transmitted data because of continuous
acknowledgements for the same packet. In either case the sender sets the congestion
threshold to half of the current congestion window. The congestion window itself is set to one
segment and the sender starts sending a single segment. The exponential growth starts once
more up to the new congestion threshold, then the window grows in linear fashion.

Fast retransmit/fast recovery

The congestion threshold can be reduced because of two reasons. First one is if the sender
receives continuous acknowledgements for the same packet. It informs the sender that the
receiver has got all the packets upto the acknowledged packet in the sequence and also the
receiver is receiving something continuously from the sender. The gap in the packet stream is
not due to congestion, but a simple packet loss due to a transmission error. The sender can
now retransmit the missing packet(s) before the timer expires. This behavior is called fast
retransmit. It is an early enhancement for preventing slow-start to trigger on losses not
caused by congestion. The receipt of acknowledgements shows that there is no congestion to
justify a slow start. The sender can continue with the current congestion window. The sender
performs a fast recovery from the packet loss. This mechanism can improve the efficiency of
TCP dramatically. The other reason for activating slow start is a time-out due to a missing
acknowledgement. TCP using fast retransmit/fast recovery interprets this congestion in the
network and activates the slow start mechanism.

The advantage of this method is its simplicity. Minor changes in the MH’s software results in
performance increase. No changes are required in FA or CH.

The disadvantage of this scheme is insufficient isolation of packet losses. It mainly focuses
on problems regarding Handover. Also it affects the efficiency when a CH transmits already
delivered packets.

Problems with Traditional TCP in wireless environments

Slow Start mechanism in fixed networks decreases the efficiency of TCP if used with mobile
receivers or senders.
Error rates on wireless links are orders of magnitude higher compared to fixed fiber or copper
links. This makes compensation for packet loss by TCP quite difficult.
Mobility itself can cause packet loss. There are many situations where a soft handover from
one access point to another is not possible for a mobile end-system.
Standard TCP reacts with slow start if acknowledgements are missing, which does not help in
the case of transmission errors over wireless links and which does not really help during
handover. This behavior results in a severe performance degradation of an unchanged TCP if
used together with wireless links or mobile nodes

Classical TCP Improvements

Indirect TCP (I-TCP)

Indirect TCP segments a TCP connection into a fixed part and a wireless part. The following
figure shows an example with a mobile host connected via a wireless link and an access point
to the ‘wired’ internet where the correspondent host resides.
Standard TCP is used between the fixed computer and the access point. No computer in the
internet recognizes any changes to TCP. Instead of the mobile host, the access point now
terminates the standard TCP connection, acting as a proxy. This means that the access point
is now seen as the mobile host for the fixed host and as the fixed host for the mobile host.
Between the access point and the mobile host, a special TCP, adapted to wireless links, is
used. However, changing TCP for the wireless link is not a requirement. A suitable place for
segmenting the connection is at the foreign agent as it not only controls the mobility of the
mobile host anyway and can also hand over the connection to the next foreign agent when the
mobile host moves on.

The foreign agent acts as a proxy and relays all data in both directions. If CH (correspondent
host) sends a packet to the MH, the FA acknowledges it and forwards it to the MH. MH
acknowledges on successful reception, but this is only used by the FA. If a packet is lost on
the wireless link, CH doesn’t observe it and FA tries to retransmit it locally to maintain
reliable data transport. If the MH sends a packet, the FA acknowledges it and forwards it to
CH. If the packet is lost on the wireless link, the mobile hosts notice this much faster due to
the lower round trip time and can directly retransmit the packet. Packet loss in the wired
network is now handled by the foreign agent.

During handover, the buffered packets, as well as the system state (packet sequence number,
acknowledgements, ports, etc), must migrate to the new agent. No new connection may be
established for the mobile host, and the correspondent host must not see any changes in
connection state.
Advantages of I-TCP
 No changes in the fixed network necessary, no changes for the hosts (TCP protocol)
necessary, all current optimizations to TCP still work
 Simple to control, mobile TCP is used only for one hop between, e.g., a foreign agent
and mobile host
o transmission errors on the wireless link do not propagate into the fixed
network
o therefore, a very fast retransmission of packets is possible, the short delay on
the mobile hop s known
 It is always dangerous to introduce new mechanisms in a huge network without
knowing exactly how they behave.
o New optimizations can be tested at the last hop, without jeopardizing the
stability of the Internet.
 It is easy to use different protocols for wired and wireless networks.

Disadvantages of I-TCP
 Loss of end-to-end semantics:- an acknowledgement to a sender no longer means that
a receiver really has received a packet, foreign agents might crash.
 Higher latency possible:- due to buffering of data within the foreign agent and
forwarding to a new foreign agent
 Security issue:- The foreign agent must be a trusted entity

Snooping TCP
The main drawback of I-TCP is the segmentation of the single TCP connection into two TCP
connections, which loses the original end-to-end TCP semantic. A new enhancement, which
leaves the TCP connection intact and is completely transparent, is Snooping TCP. The main
function is to buffer data close to the mobile host to perform fast local retransmission in case
of packet loss.

Here, the foreign agent buffers all packets with destination mobile host and additionally
‘snoops’ the packet flow in both directions to recognize acknowledgements. The foreign
agent buffers every packet until it receives an acknowledgement from the mobile host. If the
FA does not receive an acknowledgement from the mobile host within a certain amount of
time, either the packet or the acknowledgement has been lost. Alternatively, the foreign agent
could receive a duplicate ACK which also shows the loss of a packet. Now, the FA
retransmits the packet directly from the buffer thus performing a faster retransmission
compared to the CH. For transparency, the FA does not acknowledge data to the CH, which
would violate end-to-end semantic in case of a FA failure. The foreign agent can filter the
duplicate acknowledgements to avoid unnecessary retransmissions of data from the
correspondent host. If the foreign agent now crashes, the time-out of the correspondent host
still works and triggers a retransmission. The foreign agent may discard duplicates of packets
already retransmitted locally and acknowledged by the mobile host. This avoids unnecessary
traffic on the wireless link.
For data transfer from the mobile host with destination correspondent host, the FA snoops
into the packet stream to detect gaps in the sequence numbers of TCP. As soon as the foreign
agent detects a missing packet, it returns a negative acknowledgement (NACK) to the mobile
host. The mobile host can now retransmit the missing packet immediately. Reordering of
packets is done automatically at the correspondent host by TCP.

Advantages of snooping TCP:

 The end-to-end TCP semantic is preserved.
 Most of the enhancements are done in the foreign agent itself which keeps
correspondent host unchanged.
 Handover of state is not required as soon as the mobile host moves to another foreign
agent. Even though packets are present in the buffer, time out at the CH occurs and
the packets are transmitted to the new COA.
 No problem arises if the new foreign agent uses the enhancement or not. If not, the
approach automatically falls back to the standard solution.

Disadvantages of snooping TCP

 Snooping TCP does not isolate the behavior of the wireless link as well as I-TCP.
Transmission errors may propagate till CH.
 Using negative acknowledgements between the foreign agent and the mobile host
assumes additional mechanisms on the mobile host. This approach is no longer
transparent for arbitrary mobile hosts.
 Snooping and buffering data may be useless if certain encryption schemes are applied
end-to-end between the correspondent host and mobile host. If encryption is used
above the transport layer, (eg. SSL/TLS), snooping TCP cannot be used.

MOBILE TCP

Both I-TCP and Snooping TCP does not help much, if a mobile host gets
disconnected. The M-TCP (mobile TCP) approach has the same goals as I-TCP and
snooping TCP: to prevent the sender window from shrinking if bit errors or disconnection but
not congestion cause current problems. M-TCP wants to improve overall throughput, to lower
the delay, to maintain end-to-end semantics of TCP, and to provide a more efficient
handover. Additionally, M-TCP is especially adapted to the problems arising from lengthy or
frequent disconnections. M-TCP splits the TCP connection into two parts as I-TCP does. An
unmodified TCP is used on the standard host-supervisory host (SH) connection, while an
optimized TCP is used on the SH-MH connection.
The SH monitors all packets sent to the MH and ACKs returned from the MH. If the
SH does not receive an ACK for some time, it assumes that the MH is disconnected. It then
chokes the sender by setting the sender’s window size to 0. Setting the window size to 0
forces the sender to go into persistent mode, i.e., the state of the sender will not change no
matter how long the receiver is disconnected. This means that the sender will not try to
retransmit data. As soon as the SH (either the old SH or a new SH) detects connectivity
again, it reopens the window of the sender to the old value. The sender can continue sending
at full speed. This mechanism does not require changes to the sender’s TCP. The wireless
side uses an adapted Mobile Transport Layer
TCP that can recover from packet loss much faster. This modified TCP does not use slow
start, thus, M-TCP needs a bandwidth manager to implement fair sharing over the wireless
link.
ADVANTAGES OF M-TCP:
 It maintains the TCP end-to-end semantics. The SH does not send any ACK itself but
forwards the ACKs from the MH.
 If the MH is disconnected, it avoids useless retransmissions, slow starts or breaking
connections by simply shrinking the sender’s window to 0.
 As no buffering is done as in I-TCP, there is no need to forward buffers to a new SH.
Lost packets will be automatically retransmitted to the SH.

DISADVANTAGES OF M-TCP:
 As the SH does not act as proxy as in I-TCP, packet loss on the wireless link due to
bit errors is propagated to the sender. M-TCP assumes low bit error rates, which is not
always a valid assumption.
 A modified TCP on the wireless link not only requires modifications to the MH
protocol software but also new network elements like the bandwidth manager.

TRANSMISSION/TIME-OUT FREEZING
Often, MAC layer notices connection problems even before the connection is actually
interrupted from a TCP point of view and also knows the real reason for the interruption. The
MAC layer can inform the TCP layer of an upcoming loss of connection or that the current
interruption is not caused by congestion. TCP can now stop sending and ‘freezes’ the current
state of its congestion window and further timers. If the MAC layer notices the upcoming
interruption early enough, both the mobile and correspondent host can be informed. With a
fast interruption of the wireless link, additional mechanisms in the access point are needed to
inform the correspondent host of the reason for interruption. Otherwise, the correspondent
host goes into slow start assuming congestion and finally breaks the connection. As soon as
the MAC layer detects connectivity again, it signals TCP that it can resume operation at
exactly the same point where it had been forced to stop. For TCP time simply does not
advance, so no timers expire.

ADVANTAGES:
 It offers a way to resume TCP connections even after long interruptions of the
connection.
 It can be used together with encrypted data as it is independent of other TCP
mechanisms such as sequence no or acknowledgements
DISADVANTAGES:
 Lots of changes have to be made in software of MH, CH and FA

SELECTIVE RETRANSMISSION
A very useful extension of TCP is the use of selective retransmission. TCP
acknowledgements are cumulative, i.e., they acknowledge in-order receipt of packets up to a
certain packet. A single acknowledgement confirms reception of all packets upto a certain
packet. If a single packet is lost, the sender has to retransmit everything starting from the lost
packet (go-back-n retransmission). This obviously wastes bandwidth, not just in the case of a
mobile network, but for any network.
Using selective retransmission, TCP can indirectly request a selective retransmission
of packets. The receiver can acknowledge single packets, not only trains of in-sequence
packets. The sender can now determine precisely which packet is needed and can retransmit
it. The advantage of this approach is obvious: a sender retransmits only the lost packets. This
lowers bandwidth requirements and is extremely helpful in slow wireless links. The
disadvantage is that more complex software on the receiver side is needed. Also more buffer
space is needed to resequence data and to wait for gaps to be filled.
 TRANSACTION-ORIENTED TCP
Assume an application running on the mobile host that sends a short request to a
server from time to time, which responds with a short message and it requires reliable TCP
transport of the packets. For it to use normal TCP, it is inefficient because of the overhead
involved. Standard TCP is made up of three phases: setup, data transfer and release. First,
TCP uses a three-way handshake to establish the connection. At least one additional packet is
usually needed for transmission of the request, and requires three more packets to close the
connection via a three-way handshake. So, for sending one data packet, TCP may need seven
packets altogether. This kind of overhead is acceptable for long sessions in fixed networks,
but is quite inefficient for short messages or sessions in wireless networks. This led to the
development of transaction-oriented TCP (T/TCP).

T/TCP can combine packets for connection establishment and connection release with
user data packets. This can reduce the number of packets down to two instead of seven. The
obvious advantage for certain applications is the reduction in the overhead which standard
TCP has for connection setup and connection release. Disadvantage is that it requires changes
in the software in mobile host and all correspondent hosts. This solution does not hide
mobility anymore. Also, T/TCP exhibits several security problems.

CLASSICAL ENHANCEMENTS TO TCP FOR MOBILITY: A COMPARISON