Marcello Lioy, and J. P. Black Providing Network Services at the Base Station in a Wireless Networking Environment. In Wireless 97. TR Labs, TRIO, IEEE Canada (to appear) July 1997.

Abstract

Due to current demands for anytime, anywhere access to information, wireless and mobile computing will play a large role in future internetworks. TCP, the current de facto transport protocol, is tuned for stationary hosts in a wireline environment, and so does not behave ideally in mobile wireless environments. Much work has been done to improve TCP throughput in wireless environments, but the issues of disconnection and competition for limited bandwidth have not been dealt with adequately. In this paper, we propose a Base Station Service Protocol that enables base stations to provide services for mobile computers in wireless networks. Two TCP-related services are investigated which address both the disconnection and limited bandwidth issues. Support for TCP level handoff is also discussed. The disconnection service is implemented by having the base station keep the mobile's TCP connections open on its behalf when it is disconnected, and a priority service allows selected streams to use more or less of the available bandwidth. Both services have been implemented and shown to achieve the intended results.
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