On TCP performance in a heterogeneous network: A survey

Transmission media carrying Internet traffic present a wide range of charac teristics, some of which, such as transmission errors, long end-to-end dela y, and bandwidth asymmetry, may cause a degradation of TCP performance. Man y works have studied the performance of TCP over these media, most of which focus on a particular network type. In this work we study TCP performance independent of the type of network by considering the different possible ch aracteristics of the connection path. We present the problems and the diffe rent proposed solutions. This study permits us to understand the limitation s of the actual solutions and the required modifications to let TCP cope wi th a heterogeneous Internet on an end-to-end basis.