Low-loss TCP/IP header compression for wireless networks

Abstract

Wireless is becoming a popular way to connect mobile computers to the Internet and other networks. The bandwidth of wireless links will probably always be limited due to properties of the physical medium and regulatory limits on the use of frequencies for radio communication. Therefore, it is necessary for network protocols to utilize the available bandwidth e ciently. Headers of IP packets are growing and the bandwidth required for transmitting headers is increasing. With the coming of IPv6 the address size increases from 4 to 16 bytes and the basic IP header increases from 20 to 40 bytes. Moreover, most mobility schemes tunnel packets addressed to mobile hosts by adding an extra IP header or extra routing information, typically increasing the size of TCP/IPv4 headers to 60 bytes and TCP/IPv6 headers to 100 bytes. In this paper, we provide new header compression schemes for UDP/IP and TCP/IP protocols. We show how to reduce the size of UDP/IP headers by an order of magnitude, down to four to ve bytes. Our method works over simplex links, lossy links, multi-access links, and supports multicast communication. We also show how to generalize the most commonly used method for header compression for TCP/IPv4, developed by Van Jacobson, to IPv6 and multiple IP headers. The resulting scheme unfortunately reduces TCP throughput over lossy links due to unfavorable interaction with TCP's congestion control mechanisms. However, by adding two This work was supported by grants from the Centre for Distance Spanning Technology (CDT), Lule a, Sweden, and Ericsson Radio Systems AB. simple mechanisms the potential gain from header compression can be realized over lossy wireless networks as well as point-to-point modem links. Checksum could be computed from payload and values of decompressed header, but is always included in the compressed header as a safety precaution. Grey fields of full header stored as compression state. Generation field ensures correct matching of compressed and full headers for decompression.

RObust Header Compression (ROHC) Performance for Multimedia Transmission over 3G/4G Wireless Networks

“…In [6] a header compression scheme that provided robustness at the expense of reduced compression was introduced and further optimized in [7,8]. On the other hand, in [9] a number of extensions to the seminal scheme [3] were proposed; these extensions provide support for UDP, IPv6, and additional TCP features and incorporate further refined compression mechanisms [10]; a performance evaluation for packet voice over the wired internet is reported in [11]. We also note that a header compression scheme specifically for IPv6 based communication with mobile wireless clients has been developed [12].…”

Error-resilient packet header compression

“…Degermark et al [9] observed that the statistics of the compressed headers are not random, but that some residual redundancy remains in them. Often times, the compressed headers are the same from one packet to the next.…”

Context-aware protocol engines for ad hoc networks

“…Most of the attention was given to the overhead of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), User Datagram Protocol (UDP), and IP in ad hoc networks [3,4]. What is most striking about all the approaches to date is the continued assumption of a layered-protocol architecture based on in-band, in-packet signaling in which one layer encapsulates the higher layer, and all protocol headers are included in each packet.…”