On improving the efficiency and fairness of TCP over broadband satellite networks

Along with the vast improvements in satellite technologies and thanks to the continuous growth in the Internet, broadband satellite services are likely to form a strong market in the near future. This paper explores the behavior of one of the most dominant protocols in today´s Internet, namely TCP, in LEO satellite networks. The paper argues that the TCP rate of each flow should be dynamically adjusted to the available bandwidth when the number of flows changes over tune due to handover occurrence. The basic idea is to match the aggregate window sizes of all active flows to the network pipe. Simultaneously, the proposed scheme provides all active connections with feedbacks proportional with their RTTs so that the system converges to optimal max-min fairness. We refer to the scheme as explicit and fair window adjustment (XFWA).