QoS‐aware and autonomic‐oriented multi‐path TCP extensions for mobile and multimedia applications

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PurposeThe goal of this paper is to provide contributions aimed at illustrating how the autonomic computing concept may be applied within a multi‐path transport protocol called multi‐path TCP (MPTCP) with the aim of providing as high as possible a quality of service (QoS) for mobile and multimedia applications.Design/methodology/approachThe paper's general vision is to define how to use the general IBM Autonomic framework for the design of a new and generic autonomous transport layer aimed at fitting as best as possible both QoS requirements and network constraints.FindingsSeveral QoS‐aware mechanisms are proposed and evaluated and an ontology‐based semantic model for the dynamic discovery of MPTCP mechanisms is also presented. This work was done within the A2NETS project funded by the ITEA 2 program, a strategic pan‐European program for advanced pre‐competitive research and development (R&D). A2NETS aims at developing a set of common services for M2M devices communicating within heterogeneous networks.Originality/valueThe originality of this paper is the study of the QoS benefits induced by the implementation of the “partial reliability” concept in MPTCP for interactive video applications based on the codec H.264. The second contribution of the paper is that it deals with the decision process that has to be enforced to provide such an adaptable MPTCP with self‐autonomic capabilities. Towards this goal, a semantic ontology‐based model has been proposed allowing to classify and to define clearly the semantic of the different QoS‐oriented mechanisms that have been proposed for MPTCP. This ontology is aimed at being used by the autonomic manager during the decision process step.