An Evaluation Study of Data Transport Protocols for e-VLBI

Abstract

This paper compares TCP-like data transport algorithms in the light of e-VLBI requirements and proposes HTCP with bandwidth estimation (HTCP-BE) as a suitable candidate by simulating its behaviour in comparison with seven existing TCP variants; HighSpeed TCP for large Congestion Window (HSTCP), Scalable TCP (STCP), Binary Increase TCP (BI-TCP), Cubic TCP (CUBIC-TCP), TCP for Highspeed and long-distance networks (HTCP), TCP Westwood+ (TCPW) and standard TCP (TCP). Using average throughput efficiency and stability as the performance metrics we show that HTCP-BE better suits e-VLBI needs than any of the other seven protocols in environments with random background traffic.