4. Radio links

The emergence of new network technologies based on radio transmission (cellular networks, WiFi, WiMAX, Bluetooth...) poses new challenges for TCP, firstly because of radio-related phenomena, and secondly because of handovers between base stations, whether of the same technology (horizontal handover) or of different radio technologies (vertical handover). In the case of infrastructure-less wireless networks, or ad hoc networks, these problems are compounded by the route changes inherent in the nature of these networks and the routing protocols used.

• Indeed, TCP was designed with a wired context implicitly in mind, where the loss of an IP packet is generally interpreted as a congestion problem. As a result, the protocol's performance degrades significantly when packet losses are not primarily due to network saturation. Inherent characteristics...