MPTCP-meLearning: A Multi-Expert Learning-Based MPTCP Extension to Enhance Multipathing Robustness against Network Attacks

• Published in: IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems Vol. E104.D; no. 11; pp. 1795 - 1804
• Main Authors: CAO, Yuanlong, JI, Ruiwen, JI, Lejun, SHAO, Xun, LEI, Gang, WANG, Hao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Tokyo The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers 01.11.2021; Japan Science and Technology Agency
• Subjects: Electronic devices; Learning; multipath management; multipath TCP; Multipath transmission; out-of-order data reception; Robustness; throughput prediction
• ISSN: 0916-8532; 1745-1361
• DOI: 10.1587/transinf.2021NGP0009

With multiple network interfaces are being widely equipped in modern mobile devices, the Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is increasingly becoming the preferred transport technique since it can uses multiple network interfaces simultaneously to spread the data across multiple network paths for throughput improvement. However, the MPTCP performance can be seriously affected by the use of a poor-performing path in multipath transmission, especially in the presence of network attacks, in which an MPTCP path would abrupt and frequent become underperforming caused by attacks. In this paper, we propose a multi-expert Learning-based MPTCP variant, called MPTCP-meLearning, to enhance MPTCP performance robustness against network attacks. MPTCP-meLearning introduces a new kind of predictor to possibly achieve better quality prediction accuracy for each of multiple paths, by leveraging a group of representative formula-based predictors. MPTCP-meLearning includes a novel mechanism to intelligently manage multiple paths in order to possibly mitigate the out-of-order reception and receive buffer blocking problems. Experimental results demonstrate that MPTCP-meLearning can achieve better transmission performance and quality of service than the baseline MPTCP scheme.