Performance of single and multiple TCP flows over high bandwidth-delay links using error correction and interleaving

This paper investigates the performance of single and multiple TCP connections sharing a bandwidth-delay link. The link employs block-based error correction codes (ECC), along with interleaving which is first shown to affect the performance of a single TCP connection. We then examine impact of using ECC and interleaving on multiple connections on an ideal two-state fading channel. The results are obtained by numerical simulation of multiple TCP connections over the channel. Single TCP connection results show that the delay introduced by interleaving significantly affects TCP performance on a lossy channel. Without ECC, aggregate bandwidth of the channel is better utilized by multiple instances of TCP than by a single instance scenarios. However, this advantage seems to dissipate when significant ECC is introduced.