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.