A study on MPTCP for tolerating packet reordering and path heterogeneity in wireless networks
Amani Alheid, Angela Doufexi, Dritan Kaleshi · 2016
As a great step toward the 5G network that will comprise the set of revolutionary technologies designed to cope with the vast increase in demand for faster connectivity, speedier downloads and more reliable communication, Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) promises higher bandwidth and higher resilience against network path failures by allowing multiple paths between two devices to be pooled and appear to the application as a single end-to-end transport connection. This paper studies the effect of out-of-order packets on the performance of MPTCP when at least one of the paths uses different wireless access technologies. The study identifies trade-offs between different congestion control algorithms in terms of aggregate throughput gain when different packet reordering recovery solutions are implemented. The paper also suggests the best reordering solution for MPTCP for different wireless network conditions in order to maximize link utilization. The results show that MPTCP suffers from a reordering problem and the TCP-DOOR is able to maximize path utilization and provides a substantial improvement in terms of aggregate throughput for symmetrical links whilst D-SACK is preferable for asymmetrical links.