The Saratoga data transfer protocol
at Sourceforge | from Surrey
Saratoga is a fast data transfer protocol for hop-by-hop transfers on privately-owned networks - including dedicated sensor networks and the intermittently-connected networks used for delay-tolerant networking. Saratoga is intended for private dedicated point-to-point links, where packet loss is caused by errors and corruption, not by congestion, and speed and efficiency are paramount.
Saratoga was first developed at Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, and has been in daily operational use for a decade to download remote-sensing imagery from the satellites built for the Disaster Monitoring Constellation. Saratoga has been developed further in cooperation with NASA Glenn Research Center. Saratoga is onboard SSTL's TechDemoSat-1.
Saratoga is introduced in:
- Saratoga update (audio recording), Wesley M. Eddy, IETF 88, Vancouver, November 2013.
- Saratoga - fast data transfer... from space, a longer slideset describing the protocol, June 2013.
- Saratoga: scalable, speedy data delivery for sensor networks, Lloyd Wood, CCSR Research Symposium (CRS 2011), June 2011.
Video describing the history and development of Saratoga.
The technical design of Saratoga is documented in a number of internet-drafts for the Internet Engineering Task Force, intended for experimental status:
- Saratoga: A Scalable File Transfer Protocol (IETF copy), Lloyd Wood, Wesley M. Eddy, Charles Smith, Will Ivancic, Chris Jackson and Jim McKim, work in progress as an internet-draft, version -22 submitted to the IETF, December 2017.
- Congestion control for the Saratoga protocol, Lloyd Wood, Wesley M. Eddy and Will Ivancic, work in progress as an internet-draft, version -12 submitted to the IETF, December 2017.
- TFRC-based Congestion Control for Saratoga, Wesley M. Eddy, Lloyd Wood and Will Ivancic, work in progress as an internet-draft, version -12 submitted to the IETF, December 2017.
Publically available code, developed in Sourceforge CVS, includes:
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See also the Saratoga project pages and the Saratoga wiki.
Saratoga has been developed and tested over the past few years:
- Towards Deep Simulations of LEO Satellite Links Based-on Saratoga, R. Belbachir, A. Kies, A. B. Benbouzid, Z. Mekkakia Maaza and A. Boumedjout, Wireless Personal Communications, 2021.
- An Evaluation of Protocol Enhancing Proxies and Modern File Transport Protocols for Geostationary Satellite
Communication, Patrick Finch, Donald Sullivan and Will Ivancic, IEEE Aerospace conference, Big Sky. Montana, March 2013.
- A Performance Evaluation of NACK-Oriented Protocols as the Foundation of Reliable Delay-Tolerant Networking Convergence Layers, Dennis Iannicca, Alan Hylton and Joseph Ishac, NASA Technical Memorandum 2012-216047, NASA Glenn Research Center, December 2012. (Uses BER bit error rate when it should say PER packet error rate.)
- Saratoga: a Scalable File Transfer Protocol - High Speed Performance Testing, Will Ivancic and Dave Stewart, DOE Advanced Networking Initiative Testbed Review, May 2012.
- A 100-Gigabit Highway for Science - Researchers Take a "Test Drive" on ANI Testbed, Linda Vu, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, for ESnet Energy Sciences Network, 30 April 2012.
- An Evaluation of Protocols for UAV Science Applications, Will Ivancic, Dave Stewart, Donald Sullivan and Patrick Finch, Earth Science Technology Forum (ESTF 2011), Pasadena, June 2011. Also NASA Technical Memorandum 2012-217276, April 2012.
- Saratoga: A Scalable File Transfer Protocol (audio), Will Ivancic, IETF 81 TSVWG group meeting, Quebec, 29 July 2011.
- A Sender-based TFRC for Saratoga: A Rate Control Mechanism for a Space-Friendly Transfer Protocol, Abu Zafar M. Shahriar, Mohammed Atiquzzaman, Will Ivancic and Lloyd Wood, IEEE Aerospace conference, Big Sky, Montana, March 2011.
- Overhead estimation of selected protocols for file transfer, Muhammad Muhammad and Matteo Berioli, Fifth Advanced Satellite Multimedia Systems (ASMS) conference, Cagliari, Italy, 13-15 September 2010.
- Efficient Delivery of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Data, Will Ivancic and Donald Sullivan, Earth Science Technology Forum 2010, 23 June 2010 (presentation) also NASA Technical Memorandum 2011-216943, January 2011.
- Performance evaluation of NEMO in satellite networks, Abu Zafar M. Shahriar, Mohammed Atiquzzaman and Will Ivancic, MILCOM 2008, San Diego, California, November 2008.
- Extension and ns2 Implementation of Saratoga, Abu Zafar M. Shahriar and Mohammed Atiquzzaman, Technical report TR-OU-TNRL-10-106, Telecommunication and Networks Research Lab, School of Computer Science, Oklahoma University, December 2010.
Saratoga has been evaluated for use in radio astronomy applications:
- Taking Saratoga from Space-Based Ground Sensors to Ground-Based Space Sensors, Lloyd Wood, Charles Smith, Wesley M. Eddy, Will Ivancic and Chris Jackson, IEEE Aerospace conference, Big Sky, Montana, March 2011.
- Challenges in Data Sensing, Transmission and Access posed by New Radio Astronomy Telescopes, Charles Smith, presentation to the Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR), University of Surrey, Guildford, 25 October 2010.
- Moving large data sets around: taking Saratoga from space-based ground sensors to ground-based space sensors, Charles Smith, presentation to the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures (CAIA), Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, 9 September 2010.
Saratoga has previously also been used for Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) Bundle Protocol transfers. Using Saratoga, we are the first to demonstrate Bundle Protocol transfers from space for the Interplanetary Internet.
- Using Saratoga with a Bundle Agent as a Convergence Layer for Delay-Tolerant Networking, Lloyd Wood, Jim McKim, Wesley M. Eddy, Will Ivancic, Chris Jackson, work in progress as an internet-draft, version -14 submitted to the IRTF Delay-Tolerant Networking workgroup, April 2014.
- Experience with Delay-Tolerant Networking from Orbit, Will Ivancic, Wesley M. Eddy, Dave Stewart, Lloyd Wood, James Northam and Chris Jackson, International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking, special issue for best papers of ASMS 2008, vol. 28, issue 5-6, 2010.
- Saratoga: a Delay-Tolerant Networking convergence layer with efficient link utilization, Lloyd Wood, Wesley M. Eddy, Will Ivancic, Jim McKim and Chris Jackson, Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Satellite and Space Communications (IWSSC '07), Salzburg, Austria, September 2007, pp. 168-172.
- Saratoga: a bundle convergence layer (audio), Lloyd Wood, slideset presented at the IETF 69 DTNRG group meeting, Chicago, June 2007.
- Saratoga: efficient transport over short-lived links (audio), Wesley M. Eddy, slideset presented at the IETF 69 TSV area group meeting, Chicago, June 2007.
- Introducing Saratoga, Lloyd Wood, slideset presented at the DTNRG workshop, Dublin, May 2007.
Development on Saratoga and its specification in internet-drafts grew from the initial collaboration involved in working with CLEO, the Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit.
Saratoga is named for the USS Saratoga, sunk near Bikini Atoll and now a popular diving site.
