Optimal TCP segment size for mobile server access over wireless links of cellular networks

摘要

Internet access from mobile phones over cellular networks suffers from severe bandwidth limitations and high bit error rates over wireless access links. Tailoring TCP connections to best fit the characteristics of this bottleneck link is thus very important for overall performance improvement. In this work, we propose a simple algorithm in deciding the optimal TCP segment size to maximize the utilization of the bottleneck wireless TCP connection for mobile contents server access, taking the dynamic TCP window variation into account. The proposed algorithm can be used when the product of the access rate of the wireless link and the propagation time to mobile contents servers is not large. With some numerical examples, it is shown that the optimal TCP segment size becomes a constant value when the TCP window size (WS) exceeds a threshold. One can set the maximum segment size (MSS) of a wireless TCP connection to this optimal segment size for mobile contents server access for maximum efficiency on the expensive wireless link.