High speed transport protocols: an attempt to find the best solution

Abstract

The development and advances in fiber optic technology are leading to major changes in modem telecommunication systems. In short, the transmission of data through optical fiber has become so fast that the computers which the tibers ~:onnec.:t have be<.:ome a bottleneck. The transport layer protocol, which is the software interface between the netWork and the computer, is one of the most important sources of this bottleneck. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate several "high-speed" transport protocols, evaluate them and attempt to determine which transport protocol or combination of transport protocols is optimal for high speed networks of the future. The approach is to first study the requirements of transport protocols for high speed networks. Then the properties of several specific transport protocols are studied with these requirements in mind. A detailed analysis of the strengths and shortcomings of TCP/IP, XTP, and SNR are presented. TCP/IP, which is in wide use today, was designed when transmission rates were much slower and error rates were much higher than today. XTP and SNR are two new experimental transport layer protocols which have been recently designed with high speed networks in mind. The primary contribution of this thesis is an evaluation of the requirements of future transport protocols. In short, TCP/IP in its present form is simply not adequate; it must change and adapt, or replaced by a new transport protocol like XTP. or SNR.