A protocol enhancer for small-terminal satellite networks

Military communications have long used small satellite terminals to provide communications links. These terminals may be used to interconnect data networks, allowing packet data to be routed between local area and wide area networks connected to the terminals. Many military satellite links operate at modest data rates, and frequently must maintain reasonable performance at high bit error rates. Under such conditions, commercial off the shelf networking equipment has been shown to provide poor performance. Aberdeen University has developed a protocol enhancer which enhances the terrestrial link protocol, providing a considerable gain in performance. The enhancer has recently been used in trials to examine the performance of network applications connected via the enhanced satellite link