TCP performance measured over heterogeneous wireless networks with high delay-bandwidth product

The performance of three variants of TCP (Westwood+, NewReno, and NewReno with SACK option), available in the Linux Kernel, have been measured in a heterogeneous satellite-terrestrial wireless integrated network, characterized by high delay-bandwidth product and random losses. The testbed is made up of a set of portable computers, interconnected by WLANs, and a remote host connected via a geostationary satellite link. The target of this work is to measure the real performance of the TCP protocol, in order to verify the accuracy of some models proposed in the literature. In fact, most of these models have generally been validated only by means of analytical or simulation approaches, but without the use of real measurements. We utilized the SkyplexData commercial satellite platform, which adopts routers characterized by very large buffers. The goodput of both a single and two simultaneous TCP flows has been measured. Moreover, timeouts' occurrences, which produce the most relevant effects in such an environment, are thoroughly investigated.