  This paper analyses the performance of TCP over random and dedicated access
methods in the context of DVB-RCS2. Random access methods introduce a lower
connection delay compared to dedicated methods. We investigate the poten- tial
to improve the performance of short flows in regards to transmission delay,
over random access methods for DVB- RCS2 that is currently under development.
Our simulation experiments show that the transmission of the first ten IP
datagrams of each TCP flow can be 500 ms faster with ran- dom access than with
dedicated access making the former of interest to carry Internet traffic. Such
methods, however, are less efficient in regards to bandwidth usage than
dedicated access mecanisms and less reliable in overloaded network conditions.
Two aspects of channel usage optimization can be distinguished: reducing the
duration of ressource utiliza- tion with random access methods, or increasing
the spec- trum efficiency with dedicated access methods. This article argues
that service providers may let low-cost users exploit the DVB-RCS2 to browse
the web by introducing different services, which choice is based on the channel
access method.
