TCP Performance Enhancement Proxy

It is commonly perceived that Internet applications, especially those based on TCP protocol, do not perform well over satellite networks. The root of this problem is the latency incurred in a satellite link. To stay competitive, the satellite industry has developed and deployed a practical solution, called TCP Performance-Enhancement Proxy (as known as “TCP Spoofing”) to solve this problem. Although it has gained tremendous success in today’s satellite networks, its use has always been controversial among the Internet community. Its critics blast it for breaking the end-to-end principle, an orthodox of the Internet. Lately, the increasingly pervasive IPsec applications have begun to threaten the performance of satellite networks by rendering TCP Performance-Enhancement Proxy useless for IPsec-protected traffic.