S-MPTCP: A Smart MultiPath TCP Controller for Next Generation Mobile Network

Abstract

With the advent of smartphone and network industry, various mobile internet streaming, surfing, online gaming and downloading applications gained tremendous popularity. Regardless of popularity, it still suffers from the problems like start up delays, stalls, quality switches, etc. due to high variation in network bandwidth. Multipath TCP (MPTCP) emerged as one of the solutions, which is an enhancement of TCP, capable of bundling various connections by integrating bandwidth on different mobile network interfaces. However, the network communication interfaces, mainly in case of wireless, may not be with same path characteristic and modes of operation. In the existing system, there is no information about the network interface and/or the connections that are established. We present a smart MPTCP path controller for Next Generation Mobile Networks that manages the sub flow in MPTCP with multiple network communication interfaces. Our proposed approach manages the sub flow in the MPTCP by mapping the client with appropriate server network interface with the available information shared during the initial connection establishment. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal, we performed live air experiments with the help of Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8 device with Korean operators (KT and SKT) and also performed simulations in our lab at Samsung Electronics, Head Quarters. Our live air experimental results show that our approach can efficiently manage the subflows and provides better throughput with minimal connection overhead thus, improving battery power gain by 13% as compared to legacy MPTCP and saving mobile data up-to 50% as compared to existing MPTCP solution.