A First Look at TCP Performance in Indoor IEEE 802.11ad WLANs

Radio communication in the millimeter-wave (mmwave) frequency bands, recently standardized by the IEEE 802.11ad specification, is emerging as an alternative to the traditional 2.4/5GHz wireless systems, promising multi-Gigabit throughput. Most work in this area until now has focused on PHY/MAC layer design. In contrast, little attention has been paid towards transport layer performance. In this work, we experimentally characterize TCP's behavior and its interplay with the lower layers of the protocol stack over 60GHz links in a typical office environment. Our results differ significantly from the those reported in the past for 60GHz links in a stable datacenter environment.