Quality of experience‐based optimization of satellite Internet‐at‐sea using WAN accelerators

Abstract

SummaryTo support on‐board satellite Internet connectivity at sea, the shipping vessels rely on various types of WAN accelerator devices. These devices provide bandwidth optimization over high‐latency and low‐bandwidth links by real‐time data compression and transport layer protocol‐specific optimizations. These types of devices are often licensed based on the number of concurrent transport layer flows that can be optimized, which requires dimensioning the equipment before deployment. If the number of transport layer flows increases beyond the device's specifications, then such flows will simply be passed through without any optimization. The limitation to scaling would be further aggravated by emerging user applications that are not only bandwidth hungry but also initiate more transport layer flows. The purpose of this article is to study how optimizations can be carried out at client side so as to improve user quality of experience of Internet‐at‐sea without further investing in expensive WAN accelerator devices and changing operational network. In this article, we present a statistical analysis of various web browsers' traffic and suggest techniques to reduce the number of transport layer flows originating from client side. Furthermore, besides an extensive analysis on satellite Internet traffic optimization, technical suggestions are also presented to achieve better quality of experience for the users of Internet‐at‐sea. In addition, the prospective impacts of new services like DNS‐over‐https, Quick UDP over Internet Connection (QUIC), and http/2 on WAN acceleration has also been discussed.