The increasing heterogeneity and asymmetry in wireless network environments makes QoS guarantees in terms of delays and throughput a challenging task. In this paper, we study a novel scheduling algorithm for multipath transport called Delay Aware Packet Scheduling (DAPS) which aims to reduce the receiver's buffer blocking time considered as a main parameter to enhance the QoS in wireless environments. We develop an analytical model of maximum receiver's buffer blocking time and extend the DAPS algorithm considering implementation issues. Performance evaluations based on ns-2 simulations highlight the enhanced QoS that DAPS can provide. With reference to the classical multipath transport protocol CMT-SCTP, we observe a significant reductions of the receiver's buffer occupancy, down by 77%, and the application delay, down by 63%.

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Transport protocols that can exploit multiple paths, especially MPTCP, do not match the requirements of video streaming: high average transmission delay, too strict reliability, and frequent head-of-line phenomenons resulting in abrupt throughput drops. In this paper, we address this mismatch by introducing a cross-layer scheduler, which leverages information from both application and transport layers to re-order the transmission of data and prioritize the most significant parts of the video. Our objective is to maximize the amount of video data that is received in time at the client. We show that current technologies enable the implementation of this cross-layer scheduler without much overhead.We then demonstrate the validity of our approach by studying the performance of an optimal cross-layer scheduler. The gap between the performance of the traditional scheduler versus the optimal scheduler justifies our motivation to implement a cross-layer scheduler in practice. We propose one implementation with basic cross-layer awareness. To evaluate the performance of our proposal, we aggregate a dataset of real MPTCP sessions and we use video stream encoded with HEVC. Our results show that our cross-layer proposal outperforms the traditional scheduler. Viewers not only benefit from the inherent advantages of using MPTCP (such as a better resilience to path failure) but also get a better QoE compared to the traditional scheduler.

This paper assesses whether multi-path communication can help latency-sensitive applications to satisfy the requirements of their users. We consider Concurrent Multi-path Transfer for SCTP (CMT-SCTP) and Multi-path TCP (MPTCP) and evaluate their proficiency in transporting video, gaming, and web traffic over combinations of WLAN and 3G interfaces. To ensure the validity of our evaluation, several experimental approaches were used including simulation, emulation and live experiments. When paths are symmetric in terms of capacity, delay and loss rate, we find that the experienced latency is significantly reduced, compared to using a single path. Using multiple asymmetric paths does not affect latencyapplications do not experience any increase or decrease, but might benefit from other advantages of multipath communication. In the light of our conclusions, multi-path transport is suitable for latency-sensitive traffic and mature enough to be widely deployed.

SUMMARYThis paper provides an assessment study on the virtualization of a Digital Video Broadcasting -Satellite -Second Generation (DVB-S2)/ Digital Video Broadcasting -Return Channel Satellite -Second Generation (DVB-RCS2) satellite ground infrastructure and proposes a framework, named Satellite Cloud Radio Access Network (SatCloudRAN), that aims to ease the integration of satellite components in forthcoming 5G systems. Special attention is given to the design of SatCloudRAN by considering the split and placement of virtualized and nonvirtualized functions while taking into account the characteristics of the transport links connecting both type of functions. We assess how virtualization and softwarization technologies, namely, network function virtualization and softwaredefined networking, can deliver part of the satellite gateway functionalities as virtual network functions and achieve a flexible and programmable control and management of satellite infrastructure. Under the network function virtualization paradigm, building virtual network function blocks that compose a satellite gateway have been identified, and their interaction exhibited. This paper also gives insights on how the SatCloudRAN approach can allow operators to provide software-defined networking-based (1) bandwidth on demand, (2) dynamic Quality of Service, and (3) satellite gateway diversity.

Abstract-Over-provisioned network buffers, often at the Internet edge, induce large queuing delay and high latency; this issue is known as Bufferbloat. In response to this, a set of recently proposed Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithms attempt to reduce standing queues, while maintaining the bottleneck utilisation at an acceptable level. This paper assesses the performance of two AQM schemes (CoDel and FQ-CoDel) over capacity-limited networks with large Round-Trip Time (RTT). In such settings, these AQM schemes have difficulty controlling the buffering level, resulting in both momentarily high queuing delay and low bottleneck utilisation, even if the methods are claimed to be insensitive to link rates and round-trip delays. We explore this issue and show that it is possible to adapt the parameterisation of CoDel and FQ-CoDel to offer a higher bottleneck utilisation while maintaining a low queuing delay. We present experiments over an emulated test bed and a satellite network to confirm that our new parameterisation improves the download time of moderate-size files and reduces the latency for capacity-limited and large-RTT networks.

Google QUIC accounts for almost 10 % of the Internet traffic and the protocol is not standardized at the IETF yet. We distinguish Google QUIC (GQUIC) and IETF QUIC (IQUIC) since there may be differences between the two. Both Google and IETF versions run over UDP and cannot be split the way satellite systems usually do with TCP connections. The need for adapting any-QUIC parameters needs to be evaluated. Since GQUIC is available, we analyze its behavior over a satellite communication system. In our evaluations, GQUIC quick connection establishment does not compensate an inappropriate congestion control. The resulting page downloading time doubles when using GQUIC as opposed to the performance with optimized split TCP connections. This paper concludes that specific tuning are required when any-QUIC runs over a high BDP network.

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