The underlying physical link is transparent in most IP-based networks. Contrary to this commonly accepted

design rule, we propose that the applications should be made aware of the channel conditions. This is especially

fruitful for wireless links where the performance is many orders of magnitudes lower than in fixed networks.

Instead of wasting resources to make the wireless link behave as a fixed link, the application could take care of

the adaptation to the channel condition. The presented solution assumes that soft information consisting of a

reliability measure of the received bits is produced in the physical layer. This soft information is then propagated

to the application. The application may use this information to distinguish between errors caused by fading and network congestion. Another possible use for soft information is to make the applications adapt the source and channel codes to the current channel condition and thus maximize performance.