Performance of TCP on Mobile IP network during handoffs

Mobile IP solves the primary problem of routing IP packets to mobile nodes. However due to the host motion, some segments may be dropped or lost during handoff. We analyze the effects of the retransmission timeout (RTO) on the TCP performance and propose a new timeout algorithm to reduce long pauses in communication. The new timeout algorithm, fixed RTO (FxRTO) has been written at the transport layer of the TCP/IP protocol suite. This paper concentrates on TCP layer enhancement, which improves the retransmission timeout. The simulation results show the performance of FxRTO in comparison to the standard TCP and Jacobson´s algorithm. One of the advantages of FxRTO is that the sender´s connection is resumed faster when handoff is completed.