A. Valentine and G. Parisis, Data transport for the orbiting internet, in Proc. of IEEE INFOCOM (poster session), 2023.

In this paper, we introduce Orbiting TCP (OrbTCP), a novel multipath data transport protocol for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks. OrbTCP utilises in-network telemetry (INT) to obtain per-hop congestion information for each of its active subflows running on edge-disjoint paths. As a result, OrbTCP (1) enables network operation with low buffer capacity and low latency for end-hosts; (2) maximises application throughput and network utilisation; and (3) swiftly reacts to network hotspots due to bursty traffic or path reconfiguration. In this paper, we present early results showcasing the limitations of state-of-the-art data transport in LEO satellite networks, motivate the need for a novel data transport protocol and offer initial evidence that OrbTCP could overcome the identified limitations.