Design and Specification of a High Speed Transport Protocol

Due to the increase in data throughout potential provided by high speed fiber optic networks, existing transport protocols are becoming increasingly incapable of providing reliable and timely transfer of data. Whereas in networks of the past it was the transmission medium that caused the greatest communications delay, it is the case today that the transport protocols themselves have become the bottleneck. This thesis provides detailed insight into the issues that are affecting the development of the next generation of high speed transport protocols, and includes a formal specification and limited analysis of one such protocol. Through a dissection of transport protocol functions, this thesis illustrates some of the problems which are hindering optimal performance, and demonstrates some of the design considerations of new transport protocols which are providing significant gains in efficiency. Three of the most promising lightweight transport protocol research projects are surveyed to provide a frame of reference for the newly emerging design paradigm taking advantage of the low error rate of fiber optic media to optimize success, rather than compensate for failure.