A new TCP bandwidth estimation protocol for satellite networks

Satellite communications represent an important slice of the global communications sector thanks to their broadcast nature. Unfortunately, TCP used on satellite links suffers from a number of well-known performance issues, especially for high altitude satellites with longer delays. In this paper, a new TCP protocol is proposed. This new protocol arises after a careful study of the various protocols present in literature that try to resolve the typical satellite issues. Our TCP protocol is called Available bandwidth adaptable Transport Protocol (ATP) and it takes the advantages of two TPC protocols proposed in literature: Satellite Transport Protocol (STP) and TCP Jersey. In particular, it consists of a reviewed version of STP protocol with the addition of the TCP Jersey Bandwidth Estimation algorithm called Available Bandwidth Estimation (ABE). In order to show the goodness of the proposed protocol we have performed some comparisons between ATP, STP, TCP Jersey and another TCP protocol called Satellite Communication Transmission Protocol (SCPS-TP). © 2013 IEEE.