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ACTS
118x Final Report High-Speed TCP Interoperability Testing
W.
Ivancic, M. Zernic, D. Hoder, D. Brooks, D. Beering, A.
Welch
Abstract
With
the recent explosion of the Internet and the enormous business
opportunities available to communication system providers,
great interest has developed in improving the efficiency
of data transfer using the Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) of the Internet Protocol (IP) suite. The satellite
system providers are interested in solving TCP efficiency
problems associated with long delas and error-prone links.
Similarly, the terrestrial community is interested in solving
TCP problems over high-bandwidth links. Whereas the wireless
community is intested in improving TCP performance over
bandwidth constrained, error-prone links.
NASA
realized that solutions had already been proposed for most
of the problems associated with efficient data transfer
over large bandwidth-delay links (which include satellite
links). The solutions are detailed in various Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) Request for Comments (RFCs). Unfortunately,
most of these solutions had not been tested at high-speed
(155+ Mbps). Therefore, the NASA's ACTS experiments program
initiated a series of TCP experiments to demonstrate scalability
of TCP/IP and determine how far the protocol can be optimised
over a 622 Mbps satellite link. These experiments were known
as the 118i and 118j experiments.
During
the 118i and 118j experiments, NASA worled closely with
SUN Microsystems and FORE Systems to improve the operating
system, TCP stacks, and network interface cards and drivers.
We were able to obtain instantaneous data througput
rates of greater than 529 Mbps and average throughput rates
of 470 Mbps using TCP over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
over a 622 Mbps Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) OC12
link. Following the success of these experiments and the
successful government/industry collaboration, a new series
of experiments, the 118x experiments, were developed.
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