Unfortunately, I think this is fundamentally how 3G works, isn't it?
Wich is why carriers around the world are all melting down as soon as their customers start using the 3G service they're paying for. And somehow the "network experts" at AT&T (or in my case, Vodafone) never learned from the exact same issues when the whole world was tunneling tcp over ppp/slip back in the late '80s...
At least as relating to WCDMA/UMTS, I don't think it's technically TCP over TCP.
TCP is encapsulated in PDCP for the wireless portion of the transmission, and the header's are compressed to hell (using RFC 2507).
On the CDMA and CDMA2000 side of the house (I have no idea about LTE), it's using a similar encapsulation, but our good friend PPP makes an appearance.
I'm pretty sure that the wireless data networks melting down is from a combination of too much density per tower (in cities) and insufficient upstream connectivity.
No, I think you're right, it seems like there's a discrepancy between the protocol specification and the implementation (I suppose it's not the first time that's happened).
Some quick Googling turns up a lot of people who complain about latency issues with 3G (which bizarrely enough, I've never noticed. Must be the one situation where I'm not being screwed over by ATT), but I don't actually see a consensus around what's responsible for it.
It looks like the SGSN is the likely culprit, as I see some proposals to bypass it completely (or install a Gateway when PDP is detected).
Those ping times are rough, I'd be pissed too if I saw that.
Wich is why carriers around the world are all melting down as soon as their customers start using the 3G service they're paying for. And somehow the "network experts" at AT&T (or in my case, Vodafone) never learned from the exact same issues when the whole world was tunneling tcp over ppp/slip back in the late '80s...