| 摘要 |
A satellite communication system (1) includes a plurality of satellites (3), such as low earth orbit satellites, and a plurality of gateways (5). The satellite communication system (1) is bidirectionally coupled to a terrestrial communication system (8) through at least the plurality of gateways (5). The satellite communication system (1) and the terrestrial communications system (8) together form a data communication network having a plurality of nodes including source nodes, destination nodes and intermediate nodes. Multiple copies of a packet (P1,P2) can coexist within the data communication network, and the packet (P1,P2) and its one or more copies are routed, using at least in part satellite-resident routers (4) and gateway-resident routers (6), over a plurality of different paths between a particular source node and a particular destination node. At least one duplicate copy of a given packet (P1,P2) is simply not used during the execution of a packet reordering procedure in the destination node, or at an intermediate node. Certain of the paths are carried over satellite-to-satellite cross-links (13a,13b), while certain other ones of the paths are carried over satellite-to-gateway uplinks (11a) and downlinks (11b), and at least one path exists between a user terminal (7) and at least one satellite. In a preferred embodiment the packets are TCP/IP (or equivalent protocol) packets containing information for enabling the selective destruction of a duplicate packet to occur. <IMAGE> |
