Optimizing TCP and RLC interaction in the UMTS radio access network

TCP, the dominant transport protocol for Internet applications, suffers severe performance degradation due to packet losses when a wireless link is present in the end-to-end path. For this reason, the 3G specification entity, 3GPP, has defined a reliable link layer protocol, RLC, to support packet switched services over UMTS. RLC provides error recovery in the radio access network by means of an ARQ algorithm. Early studies supported the benefit of using a reliable link protocol, while more recent studies outline new problems arising from RLC and TCP interaction and how to overcome them. This article describes the most relevant issues concerning TCP-RLC interaction and evaluates the most practical enhancement approaches, based on optimum parameter configuration at the transport and link layers. We devote special attention to RLC, whose specific configuration decisions are left to operators, and provide specific guidelines for setting its parameters. In addition, we propose two operational changes for enhancing the buffer management strategy, one of the main drawbacks of RLC