Understanding User Perceived Video Quality Using Multipath TCP Over Wireless Network

Modern computing devices such as smartphones and personal computers provide multiple network interfaces such as WiFi and 3G/LTE cellular network. Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a commonly proposed method of aggregating the bandwidth of these interfaces. However, how MPTCP affects the quality of experience of existing services, especially to variances in bandwidth and latency among the individual paths over the wireless networks is not well-known. In this work, we explore the quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) of adaptive video streaming using MPTCP over wireless network given its vast popularity and significant bandwidth demand. Unlike prior works, we conduct systematic measurements over three mobile network operators, AT&T, Verizon Wireless (VzW), and T-Mobile, along with WiFi. Based on extensive measurements, we show that MPTCP can improve the QoS and QoE of video streaming only if the network interfaces have the roughly similar bandwidth and latency. Our studies also show that MPTCP can perform worse than TCP in case of extreme differences between the network interfaces.