A Loss Aware MPTCP Scheduler for Highly Lossy Networks

Abstract Varieties of wireless communication links, such as HSPA+ access in high speed trains, balloon-based aerial wireless networks and satellite Internet connections have high loss rates. In such environments, Multipath TCP (MPTCP) offers a robust solution compared to regular TCP. However, MPTCP and existing schedulers suffer from performance degradation for both constant bit rate (CBR) and bulk traffic. To tackle this challenge, we develop LAMPS, a novel scheduler for MPTCP, which considers both the loss and delay when selecting subflows, and chooses segments based on subflows’ state. The design goal of LAMPS is to achieve a steady performance for different traffic and significantly reduce the unnecessary bandwidth consumption, especially in case of bursty losses. We have implemented LAMPS and evaluated its performance for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), CBR, and bulk traffic. Our experiment results show that LAMPS preserves application latency, keeps low memory consumption, and significantly reduces extra bandwidth consumption in the presence of high packet loss rate.