OPTIMAL MESSAGE SEGMENTATION FOR MULTIHOP ROUTES IN COMPUTER NETWORKS.

Abstract

It is well known that segmentation of large messages in networks can reduce the end-to-end delay by invoking the 'packet switching' advantage. However, segmentation also increases the overhead carried through the network, and this effect tends to increase end-to-end delay. The authors show that there is an optimal segment size and provide simple closed-form expressions for finding good aproximations to it for different models of multihop communication paths. The approximations are justified either by analytical bounds on their deviation from the true values or by simulations.