Abstract
In this paper, we present a comparison of reliable multicast transport protocols for GEO satellite networks. The performance is analyzed by using general design principle of end-to-end transport protocols, mathematical model and simulation model. The mathematical model is used to present approximated performance. The simulator is implemented to support 3 types of medium access control protocols and 3 types of loss models. We consider 3 end-to-end reliable multicast transport protocols. These protocols present most of reliable multicast transport protocols? design issues for satellite networks such as forward error correction, congestion control, feed back control, feed back adaptation. Our goal is to understand the performance in several aspects of reliable multicast transport protocols in different environments.