TCP over satellite...the final frontier

Communication satellites are now being used to transport TCP/IP traffic between distant locations, and to offer Internet access. Satellites have thus become the celestial link of the Internet, an "instant" infrastructure in the sky. The rapid growth of satellite communications is evolving the TCP/IP protocol suite in positive ways. In particular, enhancements to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to address the challenges of satellite transmission will benefit all high-bandwidth TCP communications. TCP is the predominant unicast transport protocol used by Internet applications such as Telnet, FTP, and HTTP. The ability of TCP to maximize the link utilization of a satellite channel is being challenged by the inherent delays associated with space communications and some of TCP's own behaviors. The author discusses the basics of using TCP for satellite transmission and describes the changes you can expect to see in the TCP protocol itself as a result of the increase in use of satellites for TCP/IP traffic.