An Architecture for Internet Service via Broadband Satellite Networks

Abstract

High bandwidth satellites hold out the promise of a rapidly deployablecommunications infrastructure with a natural support for mobility. However,the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), widely used in the Internet, performspoorly over satellite links, and this presents an obstacle to thedeployment of such systems. We present an architecture that overcomesthese problems and provides an approach to building complex heterogeneousnetworks from simple units. We also present some results from our initialimplementation, which uses TCP connection splitting to improve TCPperformance over satellite links.