TCP at last: reconsidering TCP´s role for wireless entertainment centers at home

The amount of investments and research that led to the launch of new high definition TV sets and game consoles witness the importance gained by the home entertainment segment of the consumer market. Moreover, many entertainment appliances connect wireless to the Internet, providing users with the freedom of enjoying them at their preferred location at home. As this happens, there has been a widespread interest for the design of Home Entertainment Centers (HECs). HECs play, in fact, a key role as they are the media gateways between the home appliances and the Internet, thus enabling the distribution of various services based on different media streams at home. As most media flows are today based on the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), and most entertainment services are distributed via wireless, wireless HEC designers face the problem of devising a protocol architecture that avoids the disruption of media flows and, consequently, of multimedia services. We here propose a solution to this problem and support its effectiveness with both analytical and simulation results.