2018/04/23 by Philipp S. Tiesel, Theresa Enghardt, Tiesel, Philipp S. +5
Computer Science · Engineering · #Caching and Content Delivery #FOS: Computer and information sciences #IPv6, Mobility, Handover, Networks, Security #Network Traffic and Congestion Control #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Wireless Networks and Protocols #cs.NI
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1804.08484
Submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
arxiv created 2018/04/23 · openalex publication_date 2018/04/23 · arxiv updated 2018/04/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In today's Internet, mobile devices are connected to multiple access networks, e.g., WiFi/DSL and LTE. To take advantage of the networks' diverse paths characteristics (delay, bandwidth, and reliability) and aggregate bandwidth, we need smart strategies for choosing which interface(s) to use for what traffic. In this paper, we present an approach how to tackle this challenge as part of the Operating System (OS): With the concept of Socket Intents, applications can express what they know about their communication pattern and their preferences. Using our Socket Intents Prototype and our modified BSD Socket Interface, this information is used to choose the most appropriate path or path combination on a per message or per connection basis. We evaluate our system based on the use case of Web browsing: Using our prototype and a client-side proxy, we show the feasibility and benefits of our design. Using a flow-based simulator and a full factorial experimental design, we study a broad range of access network combinations (based on typical DSL and LTE scenarios) and real workloads (Alexa Top 100 and Top 1000 Web Sites). Our policies achieve performance benefits in more than 50% of the cases and speedups of more than factor two in 20% of the cases without adding overhead in the other cases.