Simulation-based performance comparison of TCP-variants over Mobile IPv6-based mobility management schemes

There has been a recent trend towards an all-IP network as it provides for cost-savings together with an optimized network and ease of use. But IP was designed for wired networks and the wireless scenario was not envisioned. Owing to the explosive growth of wireless users and growing demand of wireless services, the Internet body, IETF, has developed mobility management schemes to enhance IPv6 in mobility scenarios for wireless subscribers. These IPv6-based mobility management schemes, like MIPv6, HMIPv6 and fast handovers, adversely affect the performance of transport protocols like TCP during handoff. We evaluate the impact of these schemes on TCP variants, which differ from each other with respect to the congestion control algorithms used. The simulation results show that improving handoff latency through the fast handover approach does not necessarily improve the performance of TCP variants, like TCP SACK, in terms of throughput and goodput.