Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) are widely used in satellite networks to improve the performance of the Internet protocols. PEPs are typically focussed on improving throughput for protocols such as TCP and HTTP web page retrievals.
Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) are particularly important for satellite networks where they are used to mitigate the impact of the satellite link properties – especially the long propagation delay - which would otherwise limit the Internet Protocol (IP) data performance. These effects become ever more important as the bandwidth of the link is increased and PEPs are therefore a key component for broadband satellite networks to enable them to achieve comparable performance to the terrestrial networks.
A new technical report on PEPs has been issued by the ETSI Broadband Satellite Multimedia (BSM) Working Group. The report provides a review of satellite compatible PEP architectures, focussing on the most common implementations that function at the transport layer or at the application layer, together with the associated scenarios and protocol stacks. The report also presents a security analysis and describes security solutions that can be used with PEPs.
The Technical Report was produced by the ETSI project team STF-344, funded by the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association:
• Technical Report TR 102 676: “Satellite Earth Station and systems (SES); Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs)”.
The Chairman of the BSM Working Group, Mr Rupert Goodings, commented:
"Satellite networks have a vital role in closing the digital divide by providing network access to remote regions. We know that Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) are a key component in high performance broadband satellite networks and this technical report provides a welcome and timely review of this topic to help set the scene for future BSM standards.
I would like to thank the European Commission and the European Free Trade Association for their support of the industry experts that have completed this work. We look forward to continuing to develop and extend these BSM specifications over the next few years.”
About TC-SES and WG-BSM
ETSI TC-SES is the ETSI technical committee that is responsible for all types of satellite communications services. Within TC-SES the Working Group on Broadband Satellite Multimedia (WG-BSM) has been working on the creation of a series of standards for IP over Satellite for the last several years, based on a common BSM architecture and the associated IP interworking functions between satellite networks and terrestrial networks.
The objective of this WG-BSM work is to define a common functional architecture for satellite networks that provides a framework for efficient interworking between IP-based satellite networks and other IP-based networks, in particular fixed and mobile terrestrial networks. The resulting standards are designed to support the deployment of IP-over-satellite network services, with a particular emphasis on access network scenarios such as Internet access and remote office interconnections.
