Transport protocols for Internet-compatible satellite networks

We address the question of how well end-to-end transport connections perform in a satellite environment composed of one or more satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) or low-altitude Earth orbit (LEO), in which the connection may traverse a portion of the wired Internet. We first summarize the various ways in which latency and asymmetry can impair the performance of the Internet's transmission control protocol (TCP), and discuss extensions to standard TCP that alleviate some of these performance problems. Through analysis, simulation, and experiments, we quantify the performance of state-of-the-art TCP implementations in a satellite environment. A key part of the experimental method is the use of traffic models empirically derived from Internet traffic traces. We identify those TCP implementations that can be expected to perform reasonably well, and those that can suffer serious performance degradation. An important result is that, even with the best satellite-optimized TCP implementations, moderate levels of congestion in the wide-area Internet can seriously degrade performance for satellite connections. For scenarios in which TCP performance is poor, we investigate the potential improvement of using a satellite gateway, proxy, or Web cache to “split” transport connections in a manner transparent to end users. Finally, we describe a new transport protocol for use internally within a satellite network or as part of a split connection. This protocol, which we call the satellite transport protocol (STP), is optimized for challenging network impairments such as high latency, asymmetry, and high error rates. Among its chief benefits are up to an order of magnitude reduction in the bandwidth used in the reverse path, as compared to standard TCP, when conducting large file transfers. This is a particularly important attribute for the kind of asymmetric connectivity likely to dominate satellite-based Internet access     

On the impact of link layer retransmission schemes on TCP over 4G satellite links

We study the impact of reliability mechanisms introduced at the link layer on the performance of transport protocols in the context of 4G satellite links. Specifically, we design a software module that performs realistic analysis of the network performance, by utilizing real physical layer traces of a 4G satellite service. Based on these traces, our software module produces equivalent link layer traces, as a function of the chosen link layer reliability mechanism. We further utilize the link layer traces within the ns‐2 network simulator to evaluate the impact of link layer schemes on the performance of selected Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) variants. We consider erasure coding, selective‐repeat automatic request (ARQ) and hybrid‐ARQ link layer mechanisms, and TCP Cubic, Compound, Hybla, New Reno and Westwood. We show that, for all target TCP variants, when the throughput of the transport protocol is close to the channel capacity, using the ARQ mechanism is most beneficial for TCP performance improvement. In conditions where the physical channel error rate is high, hybrid‐ARQ results in the best performance for all TCP variants considered, with up to 22% improvements compared to other schemes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TFRC friendliness and the case of ECN

The TFRC protocol has been proposed as a TCP‐friendly protocol to transport streaming media over the Internet. However, its deployment is still questionable because it has not been compared to other important protocols, analysed in the presence of important mechanisms, such as the explicit congestion notification (ECN), and studied under more realistic network conditions. In this paper, we address these three aspects, including other congestion control protocols not considered before in the same investigation, such as TCP Tahoe, Reno, Newreno, Vegas, Sack, GAIMD, and the Binomial algorithms, the effect of using ECN in the friendliness of the protocols, and the fairness of the protocols under static and dynamic network conditions. We found that TFRC can be safely deployed in the Internet if competing with TCP Tahoe, New Reno and SACK since fairness is achieved under all scenarios considered. We also found that ECN actually helps in achieving better fairness. However, fairness problems arise when TFRC competes with TCP Reno, GAIMD, SQRT or IIAD in static or dynamic conditions, or both. We used normalized throughput, fairness index, and convergence time as the main performance metrics for comparison. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

TCP Westwood: End-to-End Congestion Control for Wired/Wireless Networks

TCP Westwood (TCPW) is a sender-side modification of the TCP congestion window algorithm that improves upon the performance of TCP Reno in wired as well as wireless networks. The improvement is most significant in wireless networks with lossy links. In fact, TCPW performance is not very sensitive to random errors, while TCP Reno is equally sensitive to random loss and congestion loss and cannot discriminate between them. Hence, the tendency of TCP Reno to overreact to errors. An important distinguishing feature of TCP Westwood with respect to previous wireless TCP extensions is that it does not require inspection and/or interception of TCP packets at intermediate (proxy) nodes. Rather, TCPW fully complies with the end-to-end TCP design principle. The key innovative idea is to continuously measure at the TCP sender side the bandwidth used by the connection via monitoring the rate of returning ACKs. The estimate is then used to compute congestion window and slow start threshold after a congestion episode, that is, after three duplicate acknowledgments or after a timeout. The rationale of this strategy is simple: in contrast with TCP Reno which blindly halves the congestion window after three duplicate ACKs, TCP Westwood attempts to select a slow start threshold and a congestion window which are consistent with the effective bandwidth used at the time congestion is experienced. We call this mechanism faster recovery. The proposed mechanism is particularly effective over wireless links where sporadic losses due to radio channel problems are often misinterpreted as a symptom of congestion by current TCP schemes and thus lead to an unnecessary window reduction. Experimental studies reveal improvements in throughput performance, as well as in fairness. In addition, friendliness with TCP Reno was observed in a set of experiments showing that TCP Reno connections are not starved by TCPW connections. Most importantly, TCPW is extremely effective in mixed wired and wireless networks where throughput improvements of up to 550% are observed. Finally, TCPW performs almost as well as localized link layer approaches such as the popular Snoop scheme, without incurring the overhead of a specialized link layer protocol.     

Google QUIC performance over a public SATCOM access

Google Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC) accounts for almost 10 % of the Internet traffic, and the protocol is not standardized at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) yet. We distinguish Google QUIC (GQUIC) and IETF QUIC (IQUIC) since there may be differences between the two. Both Google and IETF versions run over UDP and cannot be split the way satellite systems usually do with TCP connections. The need for adapting any‐QUIC parameters needs to be evaluated. Since GQUIC is available, we analyze its behavior over a satellite communication system. In our evaluations, GQUIC quick connection establishment does not compensate an inappropriate congestion control. The resulting page downloading time doubles when using GQUIC as opposed to the performance with optimized split TCP connections. This paper concludes that specific tuning are required when any‐QUIC runs over a high bandwidth delay product (BDP) network.     

Improving Throughput in Lossy Wired/Wireless Networks

Wireless communication is more prone to random loss than wired communication because of noise and mobility. Over years researchers have developed TCP variants that do not decrease the send window when random loss arises. Years ago it was introduced TCP CERL algorithm that proved to present a high performance compared to other protocols. Here, we test CERL assuming two-way transmission of relatively heavy load and compare with TCP BIC, TCP NewReno, TCP Westwood+, TCP NewJersey and TCP Illinois. Simulation Results show that TCP CERL gains a 145%, 137%, 120%, 97% and 125% throughput improvement over New Reno, Bic, Westwood+, New Jersey and Illinois, respectively.

     

Coexistence of VoIP and TCP in wireless multihop networks - [topics in radio communications]

When supporting both voice and TCP in a wireless multihop network, there are two conflicting goals: to protect the VoIP traffic and to completely utilize the remaining capacity for TCP. We investigate the interaction between these two popular categories of traffic and find that many solution approaches, such as enhanced TCP variants, priority queues, bandwidth limitation, and traffic shaping, do not always achieve the coexistence goals. Enhanced TCP variants (Reno, Vegas, C-TCP, CUBIC, Westwood) generally fail to protect VoIP in wired-wireless multihop scenarios. Priority schemes, including those built into the 802.11 MAC such as RTS/CTS or 802.11e, do not account for the interference nature of wireless multihop. Finally, bandwidth shaping and window control are valid tools to control TCP, but come with their own trade-offs.     

对TCP/IP计算机网络拥塞控制的研究

为提升计算机的网络性能,更好地避免拥塞现象的发生,需要对其进行必要的技术控制。鉴于此,对基于TCP/IP协议的网络拥塞控制方法进行分析。在TCP拥塞控制中主要采用TCP Tahoe,TCP Reno,TCP New Reno以及TCP Sack四种方法,其中TCP New Reno对快速恢复算法进行了改进,通过对TCP协议中的Reno进行可视化处理,实行对网络拥塞的有效管理。而IP拥塞控制方法则分为FIFO,FQ和WFQ,RED以及ECN四种类型,通过队列调度管理方式实现了对网络拥塞的有效管理。     

TCP Veno: TCP enhancement for transmission over wireless access networks

Wireless access networks in the form of wireless local area networks, home networks, and cellular networks are becoming an integral part of the Internet. Unlike wired networks, random packet loss due to bit errors is not negligible in wireless networks, and this causes significant performance degradation of transmission control protocol (TCP). We propose and study a novel end-to-end congestion control mechanism called TCP Veno that is simple and effective for dealing with random packet loss. A key ingredient of Veno is that it monitors the network congestion level and uses that information to decide whether packet losses are likely to be due to congestion or random bit errors. Specifically: (1) it refines the multiplicative decrease algorithm of TCP Reno-the most widely deployed TCP version in practice-by adjusting the slow-start threshold according to the perceived network congestion level rather than a fixed drop factor and (2) it refines the linear increase algorithm so that the connection can stay longer in an operating region in which the network bandwidth is fully utilized. Based on extensive network testbed experiments and live Internet measurements, we show that Veno can achieve significant throughput improvements without adversely affecting other concurrent TCP connections, including other concurrent Reno connections. In typical wireless access networks with 1% random packet loss rate, throughput improvement of up to 80% can be demonstrated. A salient feature of Veno is that it modifies only the sender-side protocol of Reno without changing the receiver-side protocol stack.     

Performance evaluation of TCP extensions on ATM over high bandwidthdelay product networks

Practical experiments in a satellite network environment assist in the design and understanding of future global networks. This article describes the practical experiences gained from TCP/IP on ATM networks over a high-speed satellite link and presents performance comparison studies of such networks with the same host/traffic configurations over local area and wide area networks. These comparison studies on the LAN, WAN, and satellite environments increase our understanding of the behavior of high-bandwidth networks. NASA's Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (ACTS), with its special characteristics and high data rate satellite channels, and the ACTS ATM Internetwork (AAI) were used in these experiments to deliver broadband traffic. Network performance tests were carried out using application-level software (Netspec) on SONET OC-3 (155.52 Mb/s) satellite links. Finally, we experimentally study the performance, efficiency, fairness, and aggressiveness of TCP Reno, TCP New Reno, and TCP SACK end hosts on ATM networks over high BDP networks     

Fairness and stability of congestion control mechanisms of TCP

In this paper, we focus on fairness and stability of the congestion control mechanisms adopted in several versions of TCP by investigating their time–transient behaviors through an analytic approach. In addition to TCP Tahoe and TCP Reno, we also consider TCP Vegas which has been recently proposed for higher throughput, and enhanced TCP Vegas, which is proposed in this paper for fairness enhancements. We consider the homogeneous case, where two connections have the equivalent propagation delays, and the heterogeneous case, where each connection has different propagation delay. We show that TCP Tahoe and TCP Reno can achieve fairness among connections in the homogeneous case, but cannot in the heterogeneous case. We also show that TCP Vegas can provide almost fair service among connection, but there is some unfairness caused by the essential nature of TCP Vegas. Finally, we explain the effectiveness of our enhanced TCP Vegas in terms of fairness and throughput. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Efficient support of IP multicast in the next generation of GEO Satellites

Satellites are expected to have an important role in providing the Internet protocol (IP) multicast service to complementing next-generation terrestrial networks. In this paper, we focus on the deployment of IP multicast over the next generation of digital video broadcasting-based geosynchronous earth orbit satellites supporting multiple spot beams and on-board switching technologies. We propose a new encapsulation scheme optimized for IP multicast, which has two distinct modes enabling two alternative on-board switching approaches: the self-switching and the label-switching. We also detail a set of mechanisms and protocols for ground stations, as well as for the on-board processor to allow an efficient multicast forwarding in this type of environment, while reducing the load of control and data messages in the satellite segment, and building efficient multicast delivery trees reaching only the spot beams containing at least one member of the corresponding multicast session. To integrate satellite links in the terrestrial Internet, we present satellite multicast adaptation protocol (SMAP), a protocol which is implemented in satellite stations to process incoming protocol independent multicast-sparse mode (PIM-SM) messages sent by terrestrial nodes to the satellite system. SMAP helps to update the tables required for the mapping between IP packets and MPEG-2 data segments, their switching on board the satellite, and their filtering at the satellite receivers.     

Active Queue Management for Fair Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks

This paper investigates the interaction between end-to-end flow control and medium access control (MAC)-layer scheduling on wireless links. We consider a wireless network with multiple users receiving information from a common access point; each user suffers fading and a scheduler allocates the channel based on channel quality but is subject to fairness and latency considerations. We show that the fairness property of the scheduler is compromised by the transport-layer flow control of transmission control protocol (TCP) New Reno. We provide a receiver-side control algorithm, CLAMP, that remedies this situation. CLAMP works at a receiver to control a TCP sender by setting the TCP receiver's advertised window limit, and this allows the scheduler to allocate bandwidth fairly between the users.     

TCP-BIAD for Enhancing TCP Performance in Broadband Wireless Access Networks

In this paper a new TCP variant, named TCP-Binary Increase, Adaptive Decrease is presented. The suggested congestion control algorithm is a joint approach of Westwood and an enhanced version of BIC, for improving TCP performance in broadband wireless access networks. BIAD has been evaluated with respect to other TCP variants such as Reno, Westwood, BIC, CUBIC, HSTCP and STCP with the use of network simulator 2. The results indicate that the proposed solution achieves high network utilization levels in a wide range of network settings, including wireless channel errors, link asymmetry and congestion. We also evaluated TCP-BIAD when multiple flows share a bottlenecked access link and we show that it demonstrates the fairness features required for network deployment.     

Improving Reno and New-Reno's performances over OBS networks without SACK

In TCP over optical burst switching (OBS) networks, consecutive multiple packet losses are common since an optical burst usually contains a number of consecutive packets from the same TCP sender. It has been proved that over OBS networks Reno and New-Reno achieve lower throughput performances than that of SACK, which can address the inefficiency of Reno and New-Reno in dealing with consecutive multiple packet losses. However, SACK adopts complex mechanisms not only at the sender's but also at the receiver's protocol stack, and thus has a higher difficulty in deployment.In this paper we propose B-Reno, a new TCP implementation designed for TCP over OBS networks. Using some simple modifications to New-Reno only at the sender's protocol stack, B-Reno can overcome the inefficiencies of Reno and New-Reno in dealing with consecutive multiple packet losses and thus improve their throughputs over OBS networks. Moreover, B-Reno can also achieve performance similar with that of SACK over OBS networks while avoiding SACK's difficulty in deployment due to complex mechanisms at both the sender's and the receiver's protocol stack.     

The performance of TCP/IP for networks with high bandwidth-delayproducts and random loss

This paper examines the performance of TCP/IP, the Internet data transport protocol, over wide-area networks (WANs) in which data traffic could coexist with real-time traffic such as voice and video. Specifically, we attempt to develop a basic understanding, using analysis and simulation, of the properties of TCP/IP in a regime where: (1) the bandwidth-delay product of the network is high compared to the buffering in the network and (2) packets may incur random loss (e.g., due to transient congestion caused by fluctuations in real-time traffic, or wireless links in the path of the connection). The following key results are obtained. First, random loss leads to significant throughput deterioration when the product of the loss probability and the square of the bandwidth-delay product is larger than one. Second, for multiple connections sharing a bottleneck link, TCP is grossly unfair toward connections with higher round-trip delays. This means that a simple first in first out (FIFO) queueing discipline might not suffice for data traffic in WANs. Finally, while the Reno version of TCP produces less bursty traffic than the original Tahoe version, it is less robust than the latter when successive losses are closely spaced. We conclude by indicating modifications that may be required both at the transport and network layers to provide good end-to-end performance over high-speed WANs     

TCP/IP协议在卫星链路上的应用研究

因特网的发展对带宽的要求越来越高,现有的地面网络远远不能满足用户的需求,因而卫星网与IP网结合成了目前研究的热点。简要介绍了TCP/IP的协议结构和工作原理。针对卫星网的信道差错率高、传播延迟长和信道不对称性对TCP传播性能有恶化影响,按照从链路层到应用层的分类方法,分别提出了改善措施,包括:传输控制协议层的窗口控制、快速重传、快速重发、ACK控制等改进方案以及基于TCP欺骗技术和TCP分段技术的联接分段代理方案。     

Deploying Internet Protocol Security in satellite networks using Transmission Control Protocol Performance Enhancing Proxies

Applications that use the reliable Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) have a significant degradation over satellite links. This degradation is mainly a consequence of the congestion control algorithm used by standard TCP, which is not suitable for overcoming the impairments of satellite networks. To alleviate this problem, two TCP Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) can be deployed at the edges of the satellite segment. Then these PEPs can use different mechanisms such as snooping, spoofing and splitting to achieve a better TCP performance. In general, these mechanisms require the manipulation of the Internet Protocol (IP) and TCP headers that generates a problem when deploying the standard IP security (IPsec) protocol. The security services that IPsec offers (encryption and/or authentication) are based on the cryptographic protection of IP datagrams, including the corresponding IP and TCP headers. As a consequence, these cryptographic protections of IPsec conflict with the mechanisms that PEPs use to enhance the TCP performance in the satellite link. In this article, we detail the reasons that cause this conflict, and we propose three different approaches to deploy IPsec in a scenario with TCP PEPs. Our proposals provide different trade‐offs between security and TCP performance in some typical scenarios that use satellite networks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance evaluation of TCP algorithms in multi‐hop wireless packet networks

Wireless packet ad hoc networks are characterized by multi‐hop wireless connectivity and limited bandwidth competed among neighboring nodes. In this paper, we investigate and evaluate the performance of several prevalent TCP algorithms in this kind of network over the wireless LAN standard IEEE 802.11 MAC layer. After extensively comparing the existing TCP versions (including Tahoe, Reno, New Reno, Sack and Vegas) in simulations, we show that, in most cases, the Vegas version works best. We reveal the reason why other TCP versions perform worse than Vegas and show a method to avoid this by tuning a TCP parameter— maximum window size. Furthermore, we investigate the performance of these TCP algorithms when they run with the delayed acknowledgment (DA) option defined in IETF RFC 1122, which allows the TCP receiver to transmit an ACK for every two incoming packets. We show that the TCP connection can gain 15 to 32 per cent good‐put improvement by using the DA option. For all the TCP versions investigated in this work, the simulation results show that with the maximum window size set at approximately 4, TCP connections perform best and then all these TCP variants differ little in performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mobile internet access using satellite networks

Satellites offer a promising alternative for mobile access to the Internet by both pedestrians, and more importantly, from vehicles. As such, satellites provide an essential complement to the cellular radio (UMTS) infrastructure in sparsely populated areas where high bandwidth UMTS cells cannot be economically deployed. In this paper, we analyse various mobile Internet applications in representative urban scenarios for two LEO constellations (one with polar orbits and the other with inclined orbits), as well as for some simple GEO configurations. To this end, we develop a satellite channel propagation model that includes shadowing from surrounding building skylines based on actual data in a built‐up area. Using these tools, we analyse various Internet applications and the performance of various TCP schemes in different topologies. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.