Reproducible Evaluation of Multipath Network Protocols

Lead Mentor: Ilknur Aydin

As mobile devices with dual WiFi and cellular interfaces become widespread, network protocols have been developed that utilize the availability of multiple paths. However, the relative effectiveness of these protocols is highly dependent on the characteristics of the network (including the relationship between the two paths, which are often not independent). Researchers typically evaluate a multipath protocol for a small set of network scenarios, which vary from one publication to the next. It is therefore difficult to get a good picture of how different protocols perform in a range of settings.

Framework for repeatable, direct comparison of multipath transport protocols

• Topics: Computer networks, wireless systems
• Skills: Linux, networking, data analysis and visualization, writing
• Difficulty: Large
• Size: 350 hours
• Mentor(s): Ilknur Aydin and Fraida Fund

In single-path congestion control, the Pantheon work created a reference set of executable benchmarks that researchers could use to evaluate novel congestion control designs against existing work in a wide range of the scenarios. This project seeks to achieve something similar for multipath protocols, using publicly available networking testbeds like FABRIC. For this project, the participant will:

• Prepare a set of network benchmarks for multipath protocols, using live network links, real link traces, and emulated scenarios
• Develop an experiment using the benchmarks to evaluate existing multipath protocol implementations
• Prepare materials that researchers can use to evaluate novel multipath protocols against the others in the benchmark