SAT01-4: A Study of Fairness Issues in the Assignment of Bandwidth to Elephant TCP Connections Sharing a Rain-Faded GEO Satellite Channel

The goodput of long-lived TCP connections can be maximized in error-prone channels by trading bandwidth for Bit Error Rate (BER). This fact can be exploited in the bandwidth and transmission parameters\´ assignment, by means of Adaptive Coding and Modulation (ACM), in satellite systems; in such a case, multiple source- destination (SD) pairs actually "see" channels with diverse characteristics, owing to unequal weather conditions. However, when dealing with multiple SD assignments, both aspects of goodput-maximization and fairness must be dealt with. Improving the effectiveness of TCP may be relatively easy, but maintaining the effectiveness while maintaining the fairness is a challenge. The paper numerically analyzes the fairness behavior of two bandwidth allocation methods to TCP connections, experiencing diverse fading conditions.