Post Sockets: Towards an Evolvable Network Transport Interface

The traditional Sockets API is showing its age, and no longer provides effective support for modern networked applications. This has led to a proliferation of non-standard extensions, alternative APIs, and workarounds that enable new features and allow applications to make good use of the network, but are difficult to use, and require expert knowledge that is not widespread. In this paper, we present Post Sockets, a proposed new standard network API, that is designed to support modern network transport protocols and features, while raising the level of abstraction and enhancing usability. Specifically, Post Sockets aims to give portable applications the ability to use a clear, messages based, interface to multi-path and multi-stream transports, rendezvous and connection racing, and fast connection re-establishment

A path layer for the internet : enabling network operations on encrypted protocols

The deployment of encrypted transport protocols imposes new challenges for network operations. Key in-network functions such as those implemented by firewalls and passive measurement devices currently rely on information exposed by the transport layer. Encryption, in addition to improving privacy, helps to address ossification of network protocols caused by middleboxes that assume certain information to be present in the clear. However, “encrypting it all” risks diminishing the utility of these middleboxes for the traffic management tasks for which they were designed. A middlebox cannot use what it cannot see. We propose an architectural solution to this issue, by introducing a new “path layer” for transport-independent, in-band signaling between Internet endpoints and network elements on the paths between them, and using this layer to reinforce the boundary between the hop-by-hop network layer and the end-to- end transport layer. We define a path layer header on top of UDP to provide a common wire image for new, encrypted transports. This path layer header provides information to a transport- independent on-path state machine that replaces stateful handling currently based on exposed header flags and fields in TCP; it enables explicit measurability of transport layer performance; and offers extensibility by sender-to-path and path-to-receiver communications for diagnostics and management. This provides not only a replacement for signals that are not available with encrypted traffic, but also allows integrity-protected, enhanced signaling under endpoint control. We present an implementation of this wire image integrated with the QUIC protocol, as well as a basic stateful middlebox built on Vector Packet Processing (VPP) provided by FD.io

Revisiting the Privacy Implications of Two-Way Internet Latency Data

ISSN:0302-9743ISSN:1611-334

copycat: Testing Differential Treatment of New Transport Protocols in the Wild

peer reviewedRecent years have seen the development of multiple transport solutions to address the ossification of TCP in the Internet, and to ease transport-layer extensibility and deployability. Recent approaches, such as PLUS and Google's QUIC, introduce an upper transport layer atop UDP; their deployment therefore relies on UDP not being disadvantaged with respect to TCP by the Internet. This paper introduces copycat, a generic transport protocol testing tool that highlights differential treatment by the path in terms of connectivity and QoS between TCP and a non-TCP transport protocol. copycat generates TCP-shaped traffic with custom headers, and compares its performance in terms of loss and delay with TCP. We present a proof-of-concept case study (UDP vs. TCP) in order to answer questions about the deployability of current transport evolution approaches, and demonstrate the extent of copycat's capabilities and possible applications. While the vast majority of UDP impairments are found to be access-network linked, and subtle impairment is rare, middleboxes might adapt to new protocols that would then perform differently in the wild compared to early deployments or controlled environment testing

Implementation and Evaluation of Coupled Congestion Control for Multipath TCP

Part 4: Protocols and PerformanceInternational audienceMultipath TCP (MPTCP) is an experimental protocol currently under standardization in the IETF. MPTCP allows to use multiple TCP connections for one data transmission if at least one of the endpoints is multi-homed. For example, this can be a mobile device with a Wifi and a 3G interface. It is assumed that the paths are disjoint or partly disjoint. As such these paths have different transmission characteristics, like speed or delay. With MPTCP the congestion control of each single TCP transmission is coupled in such a way that the transmission data is distributed over all subpaths depending on the load situation on each path. In this paper, we present our implementation of the MPTCP congestion control algorithm in the Linux kernel. We evaluated, based on simulations that use the real Linux kernel implementation, if the intended goals on resource pooling and sharing could be reached

Evaluation of ARED, CoDel and PIE

Abstract. In this paper we compare the three Active Queue Managements (AQMs) Adaptive Random Early Detection (ARED), Controlled Delay (CoDel) and Proportional Integral controller Enhanced (PIE) in static as well as dynamic scenarios. We find significant issues when these algorithms are used for big Round Trip Times (RTTs) as well as a significant utilization decrease when used for high bandwidth links. When used for low and medium sized links, CoDel, PIE and ARED are suitable alike, but for corner scenarios clear recommendations can be given

Innovating transport with QUIC: Design approaches and research challenges

ISSN:1089-7801ISSN:1941-013