Multi-Path TCP with Network Coding for Mobile Devices in Heterogeneous Networks

Abstract

Abstract-Existing mobile devices have the capability to use multiple network technologies simultaneously to help increase performance; but they rarely, if at all, effectively use these technologies in parallel. We first present empirical data to help understand the mobile environment when three heterogeneous networks are available to the mobile device (i.e., a WiFi network, WiMax network, and an Iridium satellite network). We then propose a reliable, multi-path protocol called Multi-Path TCP with Network Coding (MPTCP/NC) that utilizes each of these networks in parallel. An analytical model is developed and a mean-field approximation is derived that gives an estimate of the protocol's achievable throughput. Finally, a comparison between MPTCP and MPTCP/NC is presented using both the empirical data and mean-field approximation. Our results show that network coding can provide users in mobile environments a higher quality of service by enabling the use of multiple network technologies and the capability to overcome packet losses due to lossy, wireless network connections.

QUIC-FEC: Bringing the benefits of forward erasure correction to QUIC

“…These techniques transmit redundant code to enable the receiver to recover from packet losses without waiting for retransmissions. FEC techniques have already been used in multicast applications [12], [13] or in TCP [14]- [17], but the TCP extensions are difficult to deploy [10].…”

CMT-NC: Improving the Concurrent Multipath Transfer Performance Using Network Coding in Wireless Networks

“…Later on, Li et al adopted this mechanism to MPTCP and revealed throughput improvement in multipath scenarios [28]. Cloud et al also did some similar work assessing the use of network coding in MPTCP [35]. However, some good features in favor of network coding in SCTP are not available in MPTCP, such as flexible multiple-chunk packet format, Heartbeat mechanism and Selective ACK (SACK).…”

“…Specifically considering network coding, we evaluate the performance of CMT-NC in comparison with NC-MPTCP [28], which introduces network coding to a subset of the subflows traveling from source to destination and MPTCP/NC [35], a reliable multi-path protocol with network coding that utilizes all the available subflows in parallel. The comparativebased assessment is performed in terms of throughput, delay, retransmission times and buffer requirements.…”

“…Moreover, we use the implementation of MPTCP developed by Nishida [42] as the benchmark. Based on the existing implementation of MPTCP, we have implemented NC-MPTCP and MPTCP/NC by following the design of these two protocols described in [28] and [35], respectively, and have used the parameter values suggested in those papers. As all the experiments in this paper only involve independent paths that are not shared with other users, the coupled congestion control [19] of MPTCP appears as a kind of data scheduling strategy to balance the congestion across multiple paths.…”

Systematic network coding for two-hop lossy transmissions

“…The multi-path TCP (MPTCP) [14,15] protocol can be used to seamlessly establish/close the two-hop connections. In [16], it has been shown that incorporating RLNC with MPTCP may achieve higher throughput than MPTCP without network coding when links are lossy. The "seen packet" concept proposed in [17] can be used to address the compatibility issue of network coding with TCP.…”