Enable modules for tcp congestion control specialized for wireless

[Andreas van Cranenburgh]

The linux kernel offers several algorithms to deal with tcp congestion control. The default ones are not optimized for wireless networks, as missing packets cause the connection to be slowed down. With wireless networks this is unnecessary, because the access point might simply be slightly out of range.

It would be useful to enable support for other congestion control algorithms than the one currently available (reno), eg. Westwood+ is optimized for wireless (perhaps enabled by default using sysctl).

To see the available algorithms:

$ cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_available_congestion_control
reno

to use a different one (if the module were compiled):

$ echo cubic | sudo tee /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_congestion_control

I'm going to download the sources over my currently slow connection and see if it helps...

[Andreas van Cranenburgh (andreas)]

For completeness, here are the relevant kernel config options:

# CONFIG_DEFAULT_BIC is not set
# CONFIG_DEFAULT_CUBIC is not set
# CONFIG_DEFAULT_HTCP is not set
# CONFIG_DEFAULT_VEGAS is not set
# CONFIG_DEFAULT_WESTWOOD is not set
CONFIG_DEFAULT_RENO=y
CONFIG_DEFAULT_TCP_CONG="reno"

I adjusted my antenna and it's a tad bit better now ...

[Andreas van Cranenburgh (andreas)]

Ok disregard that; I didn't see that I can just load the module:

$ sudo modprobe tcp_westwood