WAN Optimization for Satellite Networking
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Masaryk University Faculty of Informatics WAN optimization for satellite networking Master’s Thesis Patrik Rehuš Brno, Spring 2019 Masaryk University Faculty of Informatics WAN optimization for satellite networking Master’s Thesis Patrik Rehuš Brno, Spring 2019 Declaration Hereby I declare that this paper is my original authorial work, which I have worked out on my own. All sources, references, and literature used or excerpted during elaboration of this work are properly cited and listed in complete reference to the due source. Patrik Rehuš Advisor: doc. Ing. RNDr. Barbora Bühnová, Ph.D. i Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor doc. Ing. RNDr. Barbora Bühnová, Ph.D. for her comments and supervision of my the- sis. I would also like to thank Ing. Petr Holášek for patience, guidance, support and provide input data for testing. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife for support during my studies. ii Abstract The modern airplane provides satellite connectivity not only for op- erational data but also for Internet access for customers. However, satellite links are characterized by the long delay in contrast to terres- trial networks, which degrade the whole throughput connection. So the goal of my thesis is to explore approaches to accelerate satellite connection using a different way. Part of this thesis is alsoa virtual machine of satellite accelerator which contains installed tools used for testing. It can also be applied for other testing purposes or development of the new satellite accelerating technique. With a small modification, it can be deployed in the real link too. This thesis also includes tests results that compare the selected acceleration technique with the traditional approach. iii Keywords Accelerator, satellite link, PEP, proxy, compression, TCP iv Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Satellite communication 3 3 Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) 6 3.1 Congestion avoidance algorithm ...............7 3.1.1 Compound TCP . .7 3.1.2 TCP Hybla . .8 3.1.3 TCP Cubic . .9 3.1.4 TCP Proportional Rate Reduction . 10 3.1.5 TCP-Peach . 11 4 Other transport protocols over satellite links 13 4.1 XTP .............................. 13 4.2 SCPS-TP ........................... 13 4.3 TCP-Noordwijk ........................ 14 5 Performance Enhancing Proxies 16 5.1 Characteristics of PEPs .................... 16 5.2 Techniques of accelerating ................... 18 5.3 Problems of Performance Enhancing Proxies ......... 21 5.3.1 VPN tunnels . 21 5.3.2 HTTPS . 22 5.4 Additional techniques ..................... 23 5.4.1 TCP Fast Open . 23 5.4.2 DNS Cache . 24 5.5 PEPsal ............................. 26 6 Header compression 28 6.1 Van Jacobson Header Compression (VJHC) ......... 28 6.2 IP Header Compression (IPHC) ............... 29 6.3 Compressed Realtime Transport Protocol ........... 30 6.4 RObust Header Compression (ROHC) ............ 31 6.4.1 Operation modes and states . 32 6.5 SCPS Header compression .................. 33 v 7 Testing 35 7.1 Setup topology ........................ 35 7.1.1 Simulator . 36 7.2 Test results .......................... 38 7.2.1 PEPsal as intermediate node . 38 7.2.2 TCP Fast Open . 39 7.2.3 DNS cache . 41 7.2.4 RoHC Header compression . 42 7.3 Conclusion of testing ..................... 45 8 Conclusion 47 Bibliography 49 A Appendix A 58 A.1 Electronic Attachment .................... 58 vi List of Figures 2.1 Example of TCP ACK handling with local retransmissions 4 4.1 Throughput comparison of TCP Noordwijk [52] 15 5.1 Splitting TCP connection in integrated and distributed PEP 17 5.2 Example of TCP ACK handling with local retransmissions 19 6.2 Packet size after compression using RoHC 31 6.3 ROHC modes with states transitions of compressor 32 7.1 Topology of testing network using virtual machines 35 vii 1 Introduction The Internet is nowadays used more often than a few years ago. It is due to the increasing trend of "smart" devices, cloud services and IoT. The applications often run in the cloud, use various synchroniza- tion or can be controlled in real-time by remote access. Due to these changes, also networks had to adapt to this increasing trend. Appli- cations require more and more bandwidth with low latency. These requirements can be met in terrestrial networks more easier than in satellite networks. It is due to the fact that satellite links are limited by physical properties. Satellite connection that uses GEO1 satellite placed on the orbit 35 000 km above the Earth’s surface makes long Roud-Trip-Time (RTT). Along with high latency, there is another problem – Slow-Start. At the beginning of the TCP connection, there is no information about avail- able bandwidth. TCP uses a method called Slow-Start for estimating available bandwidth. However, this method causes bandwidth cannot be fully utilized, mainly in small files transmission. Another prop- erty is the limitation of bandwidth, which in most cases are different for upload and download (asymmetry). The result of the properties mentioned above is linked with large bandwidth and delay product (BDP), which represent the total number of packets needed in flight while keeping the bandwidth fully utilized. This product represents the congestion window [48]. All these properties of satellite connection can be challenging for the standard implementation of TCP. To eliminate these negative ef- fects the satellite links needs to be accelerated – whether via higher bandwidth utilization, smaller latency or another improvement. There are different approaches to acceleration. Some techniques like[29] or [28] try to reduce the amount of transferred data by various compres- sion methods, and others are focused on minimizing Slow-Start as much as possible to speed-up transmission. The aim of this thesis is to find possibilities of accelerating satellite links. Each method has its own scope of usage and also some advan- tages and disadvantages. The thesis summarize these properties for a 1. Geosynchronous Equatorial Orbit, also known as Geostationary satellites 1 1. Introduction more comfortable choice of available methods, which can be used in the real implementation of satellite accelerator. This thesis is divided into eight parts. Chapter 2 introduces the reader into the basic principle of satellite communication and also used encoding and modulation technique. Chapter 3 describes Trans- port Control Protocol as the most used transport protocol in current networks. Next, it explains why the congestion avoidance algorithm degrades satellite link to full utilization and also an overview of se- lected algorithms. Chapter 4 examines other specific transport pro- tocols that can be used on the satellite link. Chapter 5 is focused on Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP) which tries to enhance the speed of the satellite link using different techniques and approaches. This part also includes a section about problems of PEP usage caused by improving the security of transmission. The next possibility to acceler- ate the satellite link is to use header compression, which is described in Chapter 6. This technique tries to reduce the size of transmitted headers by omitting static fields or field which can be deducted from previous packets. Chapter 7 includes results of tests performed based on previously described chapters. It also concludes these results and discusses the limitation of the whole testing. The last chapter 8 sum- marizes the problems connected with TCP on satellite and discusses potential future improvements of this thesis. 2 2 Satellite communication Term satellite represents a small object in space which connects two points on Earth. It is something like a repeater because the received signal is amplified, frequency is changed and send back to other Earth station [1]. In the last decade, satellite communication is becoming more and more popular [2]. It is mainly due to the fact that satellite can transmit any kind of data such as television signal, internet access or telephone calls. In some situations, satellite link can be replaced by other communication media such as fiber cables, GSM network, ether- net link and so on, but not always is it possible. For example internet access on airplane board, communication with the area after a natural disaster, internet access to the island far from the mainland, marine communication or other cases. This thesis is focused only on Internet access via satellite link. For satellite communication, there is a used analog signal modified with encoding and modulation techniques. Encoding element of station prepares digital data for transmission through the link. Encoding consists of one or more numerical process that better match the data to the specific characteristics of the satellite link. Encoding can be performed on the last node before the satellite link or dedicated node in the path. Based on [3] the common encoding techniques are the following: ∙ Forward Error Correction – used for the reduction of errors by adding redundant bits into data. Advanced FEC techniques use combinations of specific error-correcting codes through the pro- cess of concatenation. The benefit is lower error rate and reduced power requirement. Also, it improves the quality of transmission in term of the bit error rate (BER). For FEC is responsible Data link layer of satellite transmitter and so it is not covered in this thesis. ∙ Encryption – make the data transfer via satellite safe (important for e.g. military transmission). On the other hand, it has complex management and could introduce a delay. This technique is not also included in this work because it does not enhance satellite traffic. 3 2. Satellite communication ∙ Protocol adaptation – enhance standard TCP/IP stack for satel- lite communication using improvement such as larger window size or adding some special extensions such as selective acknowl- edgment (SACK). This method is described in detail in Section 3 and Section 4. ∙ Compression – is used to reduce the total amount of bits to increase throughput. However, on the other hand, it can intro- duce additional delay and may reduce quality (in the case of lossy compression).