TCP Download Performance in Dense WiFi Scenarios: Analysis and Solution

How does a dense WiFi network perform, specifically for the common case of TCP download? While the empirical answer to this question is `poor', analysis and experimentation in prior work has indicated that TCP clocks itself quite well, avoiding contention-driven WiFi overload in dense settings. This paper focuses on measurements from a real-life use of WiFi in a dense scenario: a classroom where several students use the network to download quizzes and instruction material. We find that the TCP download performance is poor, contrary to that suggested by prior work. Through careful analysis, we explain the complex interaction of various phenomena which leads to this poor performance. Specifically, we observe that a small amount of upload traffic generated when downloading data upsets the TCP clocking, and increases contention on the channel. Further, contention losses lead to a vicious cycle of poor interaction with autorate adaptation and TCP's timeout mechanism. To reduce channel contention and improve performance, we propose a modification to the AP scheduling policy to improve the performance of large TCP downloads. Our solution, WiFiRR, picks only a subset of clients to be served by the AP during any instant, and varies this set of “active” clients periodically in a round-robin fashion over all clients to ensure that no client starves. We have done extensive evaluation of WiFiRR in simulation and in real settings. By reducing the number of contending nodes at any point of time, WiFiRR improves the download time of large TCP flows upto 3.5x of our classroom scenario. We also compare WiFiRR with state-of-the-art prior work WiFox, WiFiRR improves download time by 2.25× over WiFox.