TCP over satellite links: Problems and solutions

Satellite communications are destined to play an important role in future telecommunications infrastructure. There is in particular an increasing interest in transporting Internet traffic over satellite links. Many studies have shown that TCP has a poor performance in the context of satellite communications. This is due to many factors inherent to satellite communications and for which TCP – originally designed for terrestrial networks – is inadequate. Our study is an overview of the many factors limiting TCP performance over a satellite link and the different solutions proposed to address the problem.