It looks like this should be (at least partially) dealt with at the OS level especially if the OS in question is a mobile one.
Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
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Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#12There were plenty of wireless-optimized TCP replacements proposed back in the days when WAP and XHTML Mobile were the hottest things around, but none took root as operators, web servers and browsers needed to adopt them in tandem.
Now that smartphone apps are widespread and someone developing a service can control both sides of the connection, there's definitely room for someone to devise a really good TCP replacement (layered on top of UDP) with an iOS library, an Android library, and an Apache mod.
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#13Very interesting and sheds some light on the weird latency issues I see here in Rwanda, where 3G issues aren't limited to being on moving trains. Sometimes pinging shows crazy return times of 30000-60000ms. Other times they're only 200-400ms but every other ping packet times out, i.e. one packet through, next one drops, and so on. Still trying to figure out exactly what's happening then.
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#14We should probably get these long round-trip protocol issues ironed out before we build our galactic internet
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#15As an historical note, most of these concerns are the same expressed in RFC 3481 (category: BCP). You'll note from there that some of the issues are still open even if almost a decade has passed.
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#16There were plenty of wireless-optimized TCP replacements proposed back in the days when WAP and XHTML Mobile were the hottest things around, but none took root as operators, web servers and browsers needed to adopt them in tandem. Now that smartphone apps are widespread and someone developing a service can control both sides of the connection, there's definitely room for someone to devise a really good TCP replacemen…
I think this is a really good idea. Startup? PhD thesis?
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#17Not that his advice is bad, but these statistics are a bit biased. Trains make for some pretty unusually difficult channel conditions.
I have precisely the same characteristics in my (stationary) garden.
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#18We should probably get these long round-trip protocol issues ironed out before we build our galactic internet
TCP is already out as a protocol for our galactic internet, see relevant comment from Linux TCP implementation:
/*
* [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum
* possible RTT. I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP
* to talk to the University of Mars.
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented
* ftp to mars will work nicely.
*/Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#19Not that his advice is bad, but these statistics are a bit biased. Trains make for some pretty unusually difficult channel conditions.
These are typical results. I make networking equipment that has to deal with wireless connections. Our tests are as ideal as you can get without driving around for a tower and sitting under it (although we have done that, too). We're typically in an office, stationary. This means no tower hand-offs, and stable (relatively) conditions. Round-trip-times in the 20 sec range are not rare. I've even seen RTTs a minute long several times, and once saw even greater than 90sec.
What is really interesting is to watch the RTT while you run a speed test.
Re: Why mobile apps suck when you're mobile (TCP over 3G)
#20Don't worry, our Lisp startup (www.teclo.net) is fixing TCP over mobile networks, it will all be fine soon enough. :-)