Performance evaluation of a QUIC-based proxy architecture over a hybrid satellite-terrestrial backhaul network

In future 5G networks, it will be possible to design and integrate software components dynamically and efficiently. In case of satellite communications, Performance Enhancing Proxies (PEPs) components are defined, leveraging static pre-configured HW network devices. In this context, enabling the new web protocol called QUIC, with the goal of implementing a set of satellite-oriented optimizations, it is possible to introduce the development of a QUIC-based proxy architecture and the introduction of a virtual version of the PEP, the VNF-PEP (vPEP). The vPEP can be considered as a set of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs) dynamically deployed by the action of an orchestrator. This paper describes the methodology and the test setup on reference Virtual Machines to evaluate performance in a scenario where the QUIC-based proxy architecture is adopted. They key optimization is the identification of an efficient strategy to leverage multiple backhaul links to handle different kinds of traffic, adopting QUIC-based protocol between the vPEPs. In particular, the backhaul network envisages two links: a terrestrial one considered as the default and a satellite one considered as the supplementary. Two categories of traffic are differentiated: web-traffic and video-traffic generated respectively by web-clients and video-clients. This set of sources generates so much traffic to reproduce a congestion event on the terrestrial link. The test wants to show that it is possible to mitigate this kind of event by enabling the satellite component and offloading the terrestrial link. Thus, aggregates of traffic, previously associated to a QUIC-tunnel, can be moved from terrestrial to satellite without interruptions.