TCP-Peach for satellite networks: analytical model and performance evaluation

Current TCP protocols have low throughput performance in satellite networks mainly due to the effects of long propagation delays and high link error rates. TCP-Peach is a new congestion control scheme for satellite IP networks based on the use of low priority segments, called dummy segments. The sender transmits dummy segments to probe the availability of network resources. Dummy segments are treated as low priority segments thus, they do not effect the throughput of actual data segments. In this paper, TCP-Peach is presented along with its analytical model which is used to evaluate the throughput performance. Experiments show that TCP-Peach is robust to high link error rates as well as long propagation delays, and outperforms other TCP schemes for satellite networks. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.