Steady-state performance evaluation of Linux TCPs versus TCP wave over leaky satellite links

Internet access is becoming even more heterogeneous, including different wireless backhauling links, with Ka-band satellites as a possible alternative. Since communication path is unknown a priori, adoption of PEP solutions to optimize TCP performance over satellite is discouraged to allow dynamic network reconfigurations. To opposite, an end-to-end TCP performance evaluation on such a challenging scenario, with possible large latency and transmission losses, is herein considered of paramount importance. Several TCP variants exist to tackle different aspects of communication networks. In Linux, the different TCP congestion control schemes differ from the theoretical formulations and RFC specifications, introducing a varying set of optimizations and options. This aspect makes difficult to identify a standard/reference TCP version for the proposed scenario, while testing with the real protocol stacks is deemed necessary to obtain consistent results. In addition, an innovative end-to-end TCP, namely TCP Wave, is introduced to replace the traditional window-based transmission with a burst-based strategy, representing a valid alternative to Linux TCP. To offer a fair, realistic and comprehensive evaluation, we configured a simulation setup where different Linux TCPs can be run within ns-3 network simulator and compared with TCP Wave.