Broadband Satellite Network: TCP/IP Performance Analysis

A number of satellite communication systems have been proposed using geosynchronous (GEO) satellites, as well as low earth orbit (LEO) constellations operating in the Ka-band and above. At these frequencies satellite networks are able to provide broadband services requiring wider bandwidth than the current services at C or Ku-band. As a consequence, some of the new services gaining momentum include mobile services, private intranets and high data rate internet access carried over integrated satellite-fiber ATM networks. Several performance issues need to be addressed before a transport layer protocol, like TCP can satisfactorily work over satellite ATM for large delay-bandwidth networks. In this paper, we discuss some of the architectural options and challenges for broadband satellite ATM networks. The performance results of TCP enhancements for Unspecified Bit Rate over ATM (ATM-UBR+) for large bandwidth-delay environments with various end system policies and drop policies for GEO satellite configurations for several buffer sizes are presented.