Heterogeneous Multipath Networks: Flow vs. Packet Based Routing in a Size-Aware Context

We are facing a steady increase in Internet usages and bandwidth requirements. However, many terrestrial infrastructures remain unchanged due to exorbitant modernization costs, particularly in rural areas. In front of the aging of their infrastructures, concerned users are turning towards satellite internet access. Indeed, these solutions offer a high-throughput internet access at a moderate cost of deployment. Unfortunately, the long delay introduced by GEO satellite degrades significantly the user Quality of Experience (QoE) in many cases. In this paper, we consider a hybrid access, composed of a low data rate terrestrial path and a satellite path, within a Content Delivery Network (CDN) context. Thanks to the CDN, requested content size is known allowing to use this information in routing schemes to maximize the users' QoE. Then, we compare flow and packet based routing in this heterogeneous and size-aware context. We finally conclude on the limited interest in packet-based routing compared to flow-based routing, privileged by its simplicity and good performance from a QoE point of view.