We recognized two important shortcomings of the current TCP protocol: misinterpretation of delayed acknowledgments and competition among different TCP flows. In this dissertation, we propose to address these two issues by a use of novel protocol that uses immediate and delayed acknowledgment schemes and provides a coordination mechanism among independent TCP flows. We also address certain important issues that are related to the implementation of our proposed protocol: can we maintain the end-to-end semantics of TCP? Are there additional benefits that can be harvested if intermediate nodes with TCP protocol can be used? (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) provides end-to-end data reliability and is the primary transport layer protocol for many applications such as email, web access, and file transfer. There has been a plethora of research activity that aims to improve the performance of TCP both in wired and wireless networks. Protocols for the computer networks have been very structured and layered to allow for easier upgrades and maintenance. The network layer protocol (e.g. IP) is independent and below the transport layer protocol (e.g. TCP). Our main goal in this dissertation is to examine the interaction and dynamics between the network layer protocols and TCP in the wireless environment.

Towards this goal, we examined the network layer protocols in one-hop wireless (e.g. cellular networks) and multi-hop wireless, e.g. distributed Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) networks. For each of these networks we, for the first time, propose transport layer protocols that take into account the interaction between the network layer and transport layer. For the one-hop wireless networks we have investigated analytical methods to determine the buffer requirements at base stations and estimate disruption time which is the time between two packet arrivals at the mobile host. We will show that the estimation of buffer requirements and disruption time is not only dependent on the wireless TCP scheme used, but also its interaction with the underlying network protocol. We also propose a comprehensive study of the effectiveness of wireless TCP and network protocols taking into account different networking environments that is decided on many factors such as mobility of senders and receivers, simplex and duplex communication among communicating peers, connection oriented and connection less communication at the network layer, rerouting schemes used after movement, and with and without hint handoff schemes.