End-to-end protocol performance in ATM/satellite interconnected LANs

Presents research into the interconnection local area network (LAN) over asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)/satellite technology which is being investigated and implemented in the RACE Catalyst project. The protocol issues are briefly outlined and the end to end performance through such a system is investigated. The Catalyst project is interested to promote the early integration/interconnection of ATM island networks through the existing European satellite services. This form of integration can offer very rapid deployment and flexibility in the amount of bandwidth allocated to the interconnection service. Satellite interconnection does however provide some constraints on services. These constraints include delay jitter and most significantly the long propagation delay inherent in satellite systems. The delay jitter especially affects voice/multimedia traffic whilst the long transmission delays due to window size/acknowledgement constraints effect the throughput of data protocols. Presented here are results of simulation and analytical models of the interconnection of IEEE 802.3 networks through an ATM-satellite link for data communications. These results confirm the expected performance of the common network operating systems for file access performance (Novell NetWare in its stop-and-wait and burst protocol modes and for Suns Network File System (NFS)) and the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) protocol suite