QUIC: Opportunities and threats in SATCOM

Nicolas Kuhn (1) , François Michel , Ludovic Thomas (2) , Emmanuel Dubois (1) , Emmanuel Lochin (3) , Francklin Simo (4) , David Pradas (4)

1 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]
2 ISAE-SUPAERO - Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace
3 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
4 Viveris Technologies

This article proposes a discussion on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to the deployment of QUIC end-to-end from a satellite-operator point-of-view. The deployment of QUIC is an opportunity for improving the quality of experience when exploiting satellite broadband accesses. Indeed, the fast establishment of secured connections reduces the transmission time of short files. Moreover, removing transport-layer performance-enhancing proxies reduces the cost of network infrastructures and improves the integration of satellite systems. However, the congestion and flow controls at end points are not always suitable for satellite communications due to the intrinsic high bandwidth-delay product. Further acceptance of QUIC in satellite systems would be guaranteed if its performance in specific use cases were increased. Based on an emulated platform and on open-source software, this paper proposes values of performance metrics as one piece of the puzzle. The final performance objective requires consensus among the different actors. The objective should at least provide acceptable performance for satellite operators to allow QUIC traffic but reasonable enough to keep QUIC deployable on the Internet.

Mots clés: PEP; QUIC; SATCOM; TCP

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Nicolas Kuhn, François Michel, Ludovic Thomas, Emmanuel Dubois, Emmanuel Lochin, et al.. QUIC: Opportunities and threats in SATCOM. International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking, 2021, ⟨10.1002/sat.1432⟩. ⟨hal-03411313⟩