Editing Network performance (section)

==Algorithms and protocols==

For some systems, latency and throughput are coupled entities. In TCP/IP, latency can also directly affect throughput. In [[Transmission Control Protocol|TCP]] connections, the large [[bandwidth-delay product]] of high latency connections, combined with relatively small TCP window sizes on many devices, effectively causes the throughput of a high latency connection to drop sharply with latency. This can be remedied with various techniques, such as increasing the TCP congestion window size, or more drastic solutions, such as packet coalescing, [[TCP acceleration]], and [[forward error correction]], all of which are commonly used for high latency satellite links.

TCP acceleration converts the TCP packets into a stream that is similar to [[User Datagram Protocol|UDP]]. Because of this, the TCP acceleration software must provide its own mechanisms to ensure the reliability of the link, taking the latency and bandwidth of the link into account, and both ends of the high latency link must support the method used.

In the Media Access Control (MAC) layer, performance issues such as throughput and end-to-end delay are also addressed.