Hop-by-hop transport
Encyclopedia
Hop-by-hop transport is a principle of controlling the flow of data in a network. With hop-by-hop transport, chunks of data are forwarded from node to node in a store-and-forward manner.
As hop-by-hop transport involves not only the source and destination node, but rather some or all of the intermediate nodes as well, it allows data to be forwarded even if the path between source and destination is not permanently connected during communication.
However, the End-to-end principle
claims that transport control should be implemented end-to-end unless implementing hop-by-hop transport achieves considerably better performance. Moreover, hop-by-hop transport requires per-flow state information at intermediate nodes, which limits its scalability. This is one of the reasons why almost all communication today is controlled by end-to-end transport protocols such as TCP
.
Current research in the area of sparse mobile networks is considering hop-by-hop transport for application scenarios where end-to-end connectivity is only available intermittently, as under such conditions, hop-by-hop transport can achieve substantial performance gains.
As hop-by-hop transport involves not only the source and destination node, but rather some or all of the intermediate nodes as well, it allows data to be forwarded even if the path between source and destination is not permanently connected during communication.
However, the End-to-end principle
End-to-end principle
The end-to-end principle is a classic design principle of computer networking which states that application specific functions ought to reside in the end hosts of a network rather than in intermediary nodes, provided they can be implemented "completely and correctly" in the end hosts...
claims that transport control should be implemented end-to-end unless implementing hop-by-hop transport achieves considerably better performance. Moreover, hop-by-hop transport requires per-flow state information at intermediate nodes, which limits its scalability. This is one of the reasons why almost all communication today is controlled by end-to-end transport protocols such as TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...
.
Current research in the area of sparse mobile networks is considering hop-by-hop transport for application scenarios where end-to-end connectivity is only available intermittently, as under such conditions, hop-by-hop transport can achieve substantial performance gains.