Google QUIC performance over a public SATCOM access

TL;DR

This paper evaluates Google QUIC performance over a public satellite communication system, revealing that without proper tuning, it underperforms compared to optimized TCP connections, especially in high BDP networks.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of Google QUIC over satellite links, highlighting the need for specific parameter tuning in high BDP environments.

Findings

GQUIC connection setup is fast but congestion control issues degrade performance

Page download times double with GQUIC compared to optimized TCP

Proper tuning is essential for QUIC to perform well over satellite links

Abstract

Google QUIC accounts for almost 10% of the Internet traffic and the protocol is not standardized at the IETF yet. We distinguish Google QUIC (GQUIC) and IETF QUIC (IQUIC) since there may be differences between the two. Both Google and IETF versions run over UDP and cannot be split the way satellite systems usually do with TCP connections. The need for adapting any-QUIC parameters needs to be evaluated. Since GQUIC is available, we analyze its behavior over a satellite communication system. In our evaluations, GQUIC quick connection establishment does not compensate an inappropriate congestion control. The resulting page downloading time doubles when using GQUIC as opposed to the performance with optimized split TCP connections. This paper concludes that specific tuning are required when any-QUIC runs over a high BDP network.