On the Path Management of Multi-path TCP in Internet Scenarios Based on the NorNet Testbed

With the rapid development of Internet communications, there is a growing demand to support devices being connected to multiple Internet service providers simultaneously. For example, every modern smartphone already provides at least mobile broadband (UMTS, LTE) as well as Wi-Fi interfaces. This multi-homing property can be used for resilience, but there is also an increasing interest in making use of concurrent multipath transport. That is, multiple network paths can be utilised simultaneously, in order to improve the payload throughput for applications like big data or cloud computing. In this paper, we examine the performance of multi-path transport in real-world Internet setups, based on Multi-Path TCP (MPTCP) in the NORNET testbed for multi-homed systems. However, systems in such challenging setups need proper configuration. Therefore, we particularly would like to highlight the performance impact of different path management and congestion control settings in such realistic scenarios.