UW/EE Technical Report: Performance Modelling of TCP Enhancements in Terrestrial-Satellite Hybrid Networks

In this paper, we focus on the performance of TCP enhancements for a hybrid terrestrialsatellite network. While a large body of literature exists regarding modeling TCP performance for the wired Internet, and recently over a single-hop wireless link, the literature is very sparse on TCP analysis over a hybrid wired-wireless (multi-hop) path. We seek to make a contribution to this problem (where the wireless segment is a satellite uplink) by deriving analytical estimates of TCP throughput for two widely deployed approaches TCP splitting and E2E(End-to-End) TCP with link layer support as a function of key parameters such as terrestrial/satellite propagation delay, segment loss rate and buffer size. Our analysis is supported by simulations; throughput comparisons indicate superiority of TCP splitting over E2E scheme in most cases. However, in situations where end-to-end delay is dominated Contact Author: Sumit Roy, (Phone/FAX: (206)221-5261/543-3842, Email: [email protected], Address: Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Washington Box 352500, Seattle, WA 98195-2500) UW/EE Technical Report 2005