Networking and Security

Networking and Security Research Group

Long Delay Networking Protocols

Project Background and Aims

TCP senders use incoming acknowledgements to clock out new segments, expand congestion windows and detect errors. This type of feedback is most useful when received in a timely way. As the latency in a network increases the feedback information becomes dated and less useful. In the presence of errors, the time taken to detect and retransmit may greatly add to the time to complete an information transfer.

The goal of this project is to implement and evaluate TCP extensions, variants or alternatives for use in long delay networks. Most of these protocols have been developed for space communication where delay can be as little as a few milliseconds for a low earth orbit satellite, 500ms round trip to a geostationary satellite or 33 hours for the Voyager 1 space probe. However, there are also terrestrial networks that can be subject to significant delay and some of these protocols may have applications on earth.

This project will:

  1. Perform a literature review and document the currently known Long Delay Networking approaches and protocols. Outlining their benefits and issues with a particular focus on approaches that have been implemented or can be tested.
  2. Implement one or more of the protocols in a test environment. The use of virtual machines is a possibility. Measure the performance of the networking protocol(s) under varying degrees of latency.
Project Skills
The project team will require:
  • Project management skills
  • Linux administration and software compilation skills
  • Solid understanding of protocols or at least a desire to look deeper than course work units will have gone.
  • Literature reviews, controlled experiments, result analysis
Initial References
  1. 1. Mohanchur Sarkar, K.K.Shukla and K.S.Dasgupta, A Survey of Transport Protocols for Deep Space Communication Networks, International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)Volume 31– No.8, October 2011, pp. 25 – 32, 2011.
  2. D. Tran, F. Lawas-Grodek, R. Dimond and W. Ivancic, "SCPS-TP, TCP, and rate-based protocol evaluation," Draft report , NASA Glenn Research Center, 2002. URL:htttp://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~ivancic/papers_presentations/2002/SCPS_TCP_RATE_FINAL_0903.pdf