Evaluation of TCP performance over emulated DVB-RCS scenario with multiple RCSTs

This paper analyses performance of competing TCP connections when running over different Return Channel Satellite Terminals (RCSTs) will competing for DVB-RCS return Milk bandwidth through DAMA mechanisms. A test campaign has been performed over a Linux-based satellite emulator supporting a multi-RCST configuration in a star-based architecture, with the main goal to evaluate TCP behavior in tenus of both capacity utilization and fairness. In lite proposed communication scenario, TCP performance relates on lite joint effect of two nested control loops: TCP congestion/rate control loop and DAMA bandwidth assignment Loop. Various TCP versions have been taken into account: Reno, Vegas, Westwood+, Hybla, Cubic and Noordwijk, a new TCP specifically designed for DVB-RCS point-to-point Milks. Rate Based Capacity Request (RBDC) has been selected as the access protocol.