An adaptive transmission control algorithm based on TCP （TCP-ATCA） is proposed to reduce the effects of long propagation delay and high link error rate of the satellite network on the performances. The flow control and the error recovery are differentiated by combined dynamic random early detection-explicit congestion notification （DRED-ECN） algorithm, and, moreover, the pertaining congestion control methods are used in TCP-ATCA to improve the throughput. By introducing the entire recovery algorithm, the unnecessary congestion window decrease is reduced, and the throughput and fairness are improved. Simulation results show that, compared with TCP-Reno, TCP-ATCA provides a better throughput performance when the link capacity is higher （ ≥600 packet/s）, and roughly the same when it is lower. At the same time, TCP-ATCA also increases fairness and reduces transmission delay.
