User-space Multipath UDP in Mosh

TL;DR

This paper discusses implementing application-layer multipath UDP in Mosh, enabling dynamic address selection to improve reliability and performance in multi-address network environments.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach for application-layer multipath UDP in Mosh, providing a flexible basis for multipath communication in UDP-based applications.

Findings

Demonstrated dynamic address selection improves connection reliability.

Implemented multipath UDP within Mosh for better performance.

Provides a generic framework for multipath UDP applications.

Abstract

In many network topologies, hosts have multiple IP addresses, and may choose among multiple network paths by selecting the source and destination addresses of the packets that they send. This can happen with multihomed hosts (hosts connected to multiple networks), or in multihomed networks using source-specific routing. A number of efforts have been made to dynamically choose between multiple addresses in order to improve the reliability or the performance of network applications, at the network layer, as in Shim6, or at the transport layer, as in MPTCP. In this paper, we describe our experience of implementing dynamic address selection at the application layer within the Mobile Shell. While our work is specific to Mosh, we hope that it is generic enough to serve as a basis for designing UDP-based multipath applications or even more general APIs.