Towards tactical GOSIP: performance of TCP/IP over RF links in the ITDN

The combination of underlying tactical link and end-to-end protocol in terms of performance has rarely been measured, even for the Department of Defense transport control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP). The author presents a multilayer method for collecting data on this combined performance and analyzing it to provide integrated information on the performance seen by the users application and the underlying network behavior. Four tactical RF links, the defense satellite communications tactical satellite, the fleet satellite, the very small aperture terminal satellite, and the mobile subscriber equipment line of sight radio, were studied during the integrated tactical data network demonstration. The experimental results include effects of asymmetric transmission quality and bit errors. It is concluded that TCP/IP can perform well over tactical RF links, and tuning parameters for TCP and TP4 are derived from the measurements and observations