Open this publication in new window or tab >>2005 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]
The evolution of computer communications and the Internet has led to the emergence of a large number of communication technologies with widely different capabilities and characteristics. While this multitude of technologies provides a wide array of possibilities it also creates a complex and heterogeneous environment for higher-layer communication protocols. Specific link technologies, as well as overall network heterogeneity, can hamper user-perceived performance or impede end-to-end throughput.
In this thesis we examine two transport layer centered approaches to improve performance.
The first approach addresses the decrease in user satisfaction that occurs when web waiting times become too long. Increased transport layer flexibility with regards to reliability, together with error-resilient image coding, is used to enable a new trade-off. The user is given the possibility to reduce waiting times, at the expense of image fidelity.
An experimental examination of this new functionality is provided, with a focus on image-coding aspects. The results show that reduced waiting times can be achieved, and user studies indicate the usefulness of this new trade-off.
The second approach concerns the throughput degradations that can occur as a consequence of link and transport layer interactions. An experimental evaluation of the GSM environment shows that when negative interactions do occur, they are coupled to large variability in link layer round-trip times rather than simply to poor radio conditions. Another type of interaction can occur for link layers which expose higher layers to residual bit errors.
Residual bit errors create an ambiguity problem for congestion controlled transport layer protocols which cannot correctly determine the cause for a loss. This ambiguity leads to an unnecessary throughput degradation. To mitigate this degradation, loss differentiation and notification mechanisms are proposed and experimentally evaluated from both performance and fairness perspectives. The results show that considerable performance improvements can be realized. However, there are also fairness implications that need to be taken into account since the same mechanisms that improve performance may also lead to unfairness towards flows that do not employ loss differentiation.
Series
Karlstad University Studies, ISSN 1403-8099 ; 2005:27
Keywords
transport protocols, partial reliability, image transfer, transcoding, loss differentiation, fairness, wireless networks, network emulation
National Category
Computer Sciences
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-2364 (URN)91-85335-68-1 (ISBN)
Public defence
2005-06-17, Agardh-salen, 11D 257, Karlstads universitetKarlstad, 13:15 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
2009-06-092009-06-092018-01-13Bibliographically approved