TCP over satellite links: Problems and solutions

Satellite communications are destined to play an important role in future t elecommunications infrastructure. There is in particular an increasing inte rest in transporting Internet traffic over satellite links. Many studies ha ve shown that TCP has a poor performance in the context of satellite commun ications. This is due to many factors inherent to satellite communications and for which TCP - originally designed for terrestrial networks - is inade quate. Our study is an overview of the many factors limiting TCP performanc e over a satellite link and the different solutions proposed to address the problem.