An IP-ERN architecture to enable hybrid E2E/ERN protocol and application to satellite networking

We propose an architecture based on a hybrid E2E-ERN approach allowing ERN protocols to be inter-operable with current IP-based networks. Without introducing complex operations, the resulting E2E-ERN protocol provides inter and intra protocol fairness and benefits from all ERN advantages when possible. We detail the principle of this novel architecture, called IP-ERN, and show that this architecture is highly adaptive to the network dynamics and is compliant with every TCP feature, IPv4, IPv6 as well as IP-in-IP tunneling solutions. As a possible use case, we test this architecture as a potential candidate to replace Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) commonly-used over satellite IP-based networks. Compared to splitting PEP, the IP-ERN architecture does not break the E2E connectivity, still achieves high satellite link utilization and fairness without needs of extra fault tolerant mechanisms.