DR-TCP: Downloadable and Reconfigurable TCP

DR-TCP is a new TCP implementation structure that focuses on reconfigurability and extensibility. To make TCP reconfigurable, we re-implement Reno based on a state machine model so that reconfiguration can be done by just modifying state transition table. As a result, DR-TCP can support dynamic reconfiguration without loss of connectivity and its overhead is very low. It can also support binary-level protocol upgrade for extensibility by downloading a new TCP variant which the system does not have. This scheme is more suitable for mobile hand-held devices than existing source-level solution since not requiring compilation environment. To demonstrate the effectiveness, dynamic reconfiguration is performed over Internet, which successfully converts TCP Reno to Westwood at runtime.