TCP performance over proactive and reactive routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, we investigate the performance of TCP over a proactive and a reactive routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks. For this investigation we choose DSDV for the proactive side and AODV for the reactive one. We use ns-2 to evaluate the TCP window size, throughput, packet delay and routing overhead over a single TCP connection. We also use a different metric, expected throughput, for the comparison of throughput of the routing protocols. Our observation shows that the chosen metrics are closely related and the TCP performance is heavily dependent on the routing protocol. It also shows that the TCP performs better over the reactive one when mobility is high.