Improvements on IP header compression: a performance study

Due to bandwidth constraints on the wireless link in an IP network, it is useful to compress the headers so as to maximize the utilization of the link. Different header compression schemes have been proposed. Some make use of the similarity in consecutive headers in a packet flow to compress these headers. These are called here time compression, as they acquire the compression information over the time length of a flow. Another scheme introduced recently makes use of the similarity in consecutive flows from or to a given mobile terminal to compress these headers. This we call a space compression, as it uses information about the distribution of flows over the destination address space. We present here a comparison of these two classes of header compression algorithm-time and space- and of a third one that combines them. The combined algorithm significantly outperforms traditional header compression algorithm. We evaluate the compression scheme with respect to actual Internet data traces.