Three Main Approaches to improve TCP/IP in Wireless Networks, Computer Networks - Research Paper Example

These problems however can be inconvenient and costly in the long run and thus it is imperative that the performance of TCP/IP networks be improved. Added to the problems already encountered by traditional TCP/IP networks is the exponential growing of the participation of wireless networks. This paper presents three of the approaches that have been designed to improve TCP/IP in today’s networks. Also included are comparisons with other techniques to see how one technique fares with others. In view of this, probable power problems in the future could be accounted for and we could possibly enjoy the perfect TCP/IP network.

Its predecessor ARPANET’s development in the 1970’s by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense (DOD) was first intended to study and demonstrate computer resource sharing (Stallings 281). By 1975, it was no longer an experimental network and has been transformed to Defense Data Network, which met the DOD’s need demand for “secure command and control communications network and for ordinary unclassified communications” (Stallings 281). The outgrowth of ARPANET is what we know to be TCP/IP today.

It is the communications protocol that unlike the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) reference model recognizes the need for hierarchy. Its launch was a success because it delivered basic services that everyone needs like file transfer, electronic mail, and remote logon across a large number of client and server systems. TCP/IP networks however were designed to be dynamic. Errors are considered to be normal occurrences and are sorted out later. The first and foremost priority is for the network to continue working.

This design provides problems of its own. Aside from design problems, TCP/IP has been plagued by the inevitable growth of wireless networks’ participation. Wireless networks, as compared to traditional wired networks, have higher bit-error rates,