TCP behavior in networks with dynamic propagation delay

This paper provides a preliminary investigation into the impact a link with changing propagation delay has on the performance of TCP file transfers. We investigate over a dozen different variable delay patterns, based on spacecraft movement. We highlight the performance impact of such variability, paying close attention to TCP´s retransmission timer, which is based on the observed round-trip time of the network path. In addition, we explore one scenario in which the round-trip time across a network path suddenly changes due to a large change in the path between the two end-points. We conclude that the variable delay network paths studied in this paper do not drastically impact TCP performance