TCP behavior in networks with dynamic propagation delay
Mark C. Allman, Jim Griner · 2002
This paper provides a preliminary investigation into the impact a link with changing propagation delay has on the performance of TCP file transfers. We investigate over a dozen different variable delay patterns, based on spacecraft movement. We highlight the performance impact of such variability, paying close attention to TCP's retransmission timer, which is based on the observed round-trip time of the network path. In addition, we explore one scenario in which the round-trip time across a network path suddenly changes due to a large change in the path between the two end-points. We conclude that the variable delay network paths studied in this paper do not drastically impact TCP performance.