Systems and methods for requesting packets for transmission over a wirless channel having a dynamically changing capacity due to a highly varibale delay

Abstract

Systems and methods which allow the under-utilization of high-speed radio channels to be reduced significantly are provided which feature packet buffering and buffer management for a specific link segment of the end-to-end TCP connection. Dynamic rate control (DRC) is performed in a manner which transparently uses the advertised receiver window size mechanism provided within TCP, to maintain a steady stream of packets to be transported onto a long and variable delay high-speed channel. A queue is managed by dynamically relating the current size of the queue to the amount of incoming data by enlarging or shrinking the client advertised window size to the predicted buffer growth. DRC does not perform end-to-end flow control, but rather it supplements this function of TCP. The invention may be implemented as an agent of TCP in the sense that it is hidden in the middle of the network.