Performance evaluation of TCP Noordwijk over satellite systems for fixed and mobile services

TCP Noordwijk has been designed and implemented to optimize short transfers (i.e. HTTP traffic) over satellite links, while assuring good performance for long transfers (e.g., FTP) as well. It was developed in the frame of an European Space Agency (ESA) project [†]. Its target scenario is a controlled communication environment adopting DVB-RCS standard between I-PEPs. A rich test campaign to both validate the protocol and evaluate performance improvements with respect to standard TCP has been performed using the Ns-2 simulator. This paper contributes to the evaluation of TCP-Noordwijk performance showing results of trials over a real DVB-RCS link, simulations to test protocol performance in a mobile satellite system (with a particular focus on high-speed trains) and tests on a satellite Linux-based emulation platform called SNEP.