Optimal acknowledgment frequency over asymmetric space-internet links

The acknowledgement (ACK) strategy of transmission control protocol (TCP) has been modified to delay the ACKs for a configurable period of time that is related to the round-trip time (RTT) to improve its performance in asymmetric links such as space communications. A general relationship between the asymmetric channel ratio and the optimal ACK frequency to achieve maximum throughput is not available. This paper studies the optimal ACK frequency with respect to the channel RTT to achieve the maximum throughput over various asymmetric, geo-stationary earth orbit (GEO)-satellite links using a test-bed. It is found that when the asymmetric channel ratio is as high as about 100/1, the optimal ACK frequency must be increased with an increase in asymmetric ratio to complement the impact of the reduction of ACK channel rate. As a rule of thumb, every two-fold increase in asymmetric ratio requires the optimal ACK frequency to be increased by one ACK per RTT. A regression model was built to reflect the relationship between the optimal ACK frequency and the asymmetric channel ratio and has been validated