Escape the tyranny of TCP

Abstract

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is ubiquitous, sophisticated, and effective. It also prevents the innovation needed to improve delivery of Internet services to the wireless tactical edge of DOD operations. We argue in this paper that TCP should be used as a short-range local access protocol for COTS compatibility rather than as the primary end-to-end transport protocol for the tactical GIG. We describe a straightforward way to implement this architecture without changing COTS endpoints. The implementation includes a TCP spoofing proxy, an open-standard HAIPE-compatible short-haul protocol, and a modularized core transport protocol endpoint.