A Simulation Study of Scalable TCP and HighSpeed TCP in Geostationary Satellite Networks

Abstract

This paper investigates the performance of two TCP enhancements (i.e., Scalable TCP and HighSpeed TCP), recently proposed for high-speed backbone networks with a very large bandwidth-delay product, in a geostationary satellite environment. Both persistent and elastic traffic patterns are considered, performance being evaluated in terms of TCP throughput and mean session delay, respectively. The impact of channel characteristics (packet error rate, correlation between successive losses) is widely discussed. Fairness issues are also accounted for, together with the impact of some system parameters, such as the satellite link bandwidth. Extensive comparisons are carried out among Scalable TCP, HighSpeed TCP and other congestion control schemes. The obtained results show the soundness for the use of such protocols in geostationary satellite networks. Indeed, both protocols permit to improve the performance of TCP connections in a wide range of channel conditions, showing (especially Scalable TCP) to be able to cope well with rainy conditions and to exploit a future increase in the satellite link capacity.