TCP performance over satellite networks

The Transport Control Protocol (TCP) performs well on wired networks, where packet losses occur mostly because of congestion. Nevertheless, on wireless links, many non-congestion related losses are due to transmission error. TCP doesn't distinguish between these losses, interpreting all of them as caused by congestion, and reacting by activating its congestion control algorithms (slow start, congestion avoidance). This produces a low end-to-end performance on wireless links. In this work, we evaluate TCP performance on a wireless link. For this, we simulate a scenario using the OPNET Modeler 7.0 software. Considering the low performance obtained with the simulations, we propose a new protocol more appropriate to satellite networks characteristics.