Enhancing Transport Protocols over Satellite Networks
draft-jones-tsvwg-transport-for-satellite-00
Internet Engineering Task Force T. Jones
Internet-Draft G. Fairhurst
Intended status: Informational University of Aberdeen
Expires: 26 August 2021 N. Kuhn
CNES
J. Border
Hughes Network Systems, LLC
E. Stephan
Orange
22 February 2021
Enhancing Transport Protocols over Satellite Networks
draft-jones-tsvwg-transport-for-satellite-00
Abstract
IETF transport protocols such as TCP, SCTP and QUIC are designed to
function correctly over any network path. This includes networks
paths that utilise a satellite link or network. While transport
protocols function, the characteristics of satellite networks can
impact performance when using the defaults in standard mechanisms,
due to the specific characteristics of these paths.
RFC 2488 and RFC 3135 describe mechanisms that enable TCP to more
effectively utilize the available capacity of a network path that
includes a satellite system. Since publication, both application and
transport layers and satellite systems have evolved. Indeed, the
development of encrypted protocols such as QUIC challenges currently
deployed solutions, for satellite systems the capacity has increased
and commercial systems are now available that use a range of
satellite orbital positions.
This document describes the current characterises of common satellite
paths and describes considerations when implementing and deploying
reliable transport protocols that are intended to work efficiently
over paths that include a satellite system. It discusses available
network mitigations and offers advice to designers of protocols and
operators of satellite networks.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
Jones, et al. Expires 26 August 2021 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Internet Transport for Satellite February 2021
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 26 August 2021.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Satellite Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (GEO) . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.3. Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.4. Hybrid Network Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.5. Convergence with Mobile Cellular . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Satellite System Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. Impact of Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.1. Larger Bandwidth Delay Product . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.2. Variable Link Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.1.3. Impact of delay on protocol feedback . . . . . . . . 10
3.2. Intermittent connectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4. On-Path Mitigations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1. Link-Level Forward Error Correction and ARQ . . . . . . . 11
4.2. PMTU Discovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Show full document text