On the Benefits of Using Multipath TCP and Openflow in Shared Bottlenecks

Abstract

This paper focuses on evaluating the use of MPTCP to forward sub flows in Open Flow networks. MPTCP is a network protocol designed to forward sub flows through disjointed paths. Modern networks commonly use Equal-Cost Multipath Protocol (ECMP) to split flows through distinct paths. However, even with ECMP enabled, sub flows may be forwarded through the same path. MPTCP improves the multipath routing by setting sub flows to be forwarded through distinct paths. As a consequence, the amount of sub flows must be considered to evaluate the network throughput. In this paper, we design Multiflow to use MPTCP in Open Flow networks. Our proposal is to improve the throughput in shared bottlenecks by forwarding sub flows from a same MPTCP connection through multiple paths. We validate our approach in a test bed where shared bottlenecks occur in the link at the endpoints. The Multiflow improvement of the network performance is evaluated in experiments about resilience and end-to-end throughput.