Improving GridFTP performance with split TCP connections

Many grid computing projects involve sharing and transferring large volumes of data. It is often important to maximise data throughput. Grid computing environments can be highly heterogeneous in nature and could involve large round trip times between collaborating sites. The actual throughput achieved could be much lower than the available bandwidth due to TCP dynamics. One technique that helps improve TCP performance in heterogeneous network environments is split TCP connections, where the connection is split at one or more points in the network. This paper examines the use of this technique for GridFTP file transfers. Results are promising showing up to four times improvement over GridFTP file transfers involving just a single end-to-end TCP connection