QUIC transmission protocol: Test-bed design, implementation and experimental evaluation

Abstract

With the ever increasing demand for higher speed internet connectivity that can fulfil the application continuous need for higher bandwidth Google being the pioneer in many web-based services has launched a new UDP-based protocol named quick UDP internet connections (QUIC), which aims at providing faster data delivery without requiring upgrades or modifications to the network infrastructure. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview about QUIC protocol, propose the design and implementation of a test-bed, that is used experimentally to evaluate QUIC protocol under different network conditions and scenarios. In particular, the performance advantage of QUIC in terms of delay and throughput are examined taking into account different network conditions that resemble the real internet environment. Two scenarios are proposed, the first one investigates the protocol performance under a controlled network environment, while the second one tests the protocol in a real uncontrolled network. To achieve that, a test-bed is proposed and implemented that emulates the network impairments encountered in real-network such as packet loss, bit errors, and bandwidth limitation in a controlled manner. After that, QUIC is tested in real operational wired and wireless networks. In both scenarios, QUIC outperforms TCP in terms of delay, which strengthens QUIC position for being a potential alternative to TCP.