Socket Intents: OS Support for Using Multiple Access Networks and its Benefits for Web Browsing
Philipp S. Tiesel, Theresa Enghardt, Mirko Palmer, Anja, Feldmann

TL;DR
This paper introduces Socket Intents, an OS-level approach allowing applications to specify communication preferences, enabling smarter multi-network usage for web browsing, resulting in significant performance improvements in diverse network scenarios.
Contribution
The paper presents a novel OS support mechanism called Socket Intents that enables applications to communicate their network preferences for better multi-access network management.
Findings
Performance benefits in over 50% of cases
Speedups of more than two times in 20% of cases
Feasibility demonstrated with prototype and simulations
Abstract
In today's Internet, mobile devices are connected to multiple access networks, e.g., WiFi/DSL and LTE. To take advantage of the networks' diverse paths characteristics (delay, bandwidth, and reliability) and aggregate bandwidth, we need smart strategies for choosing which interface(s) to use for what traffic. In this paper, we present an approach how to tackle this challenge as part of the Operating System (OS): With the concept of Socket Intents, applications can express what they know about their communication pattern and their preferences. Using our Socket Intents Prototype and our modified BSD Socket Interface, this information is used to choose the most appropriate path or path combination on a per message or per connection basis. We evaluate our system based on the use case of Web browsing: Using our prototype and a client-side proxy, we show the feasibility and benefits of our…
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Taxonomy
TopicsIPv6, Mobility, Handover, Networks, Security · Wireless Networks and Protocols · Caching and Content Delivery
