Multi-attribute Aware Path Selection Approach for Efficient MPTCP-based Data Delivery

With the increasing diversity of wireless access technologies, and the further integration of mobile communication and heterogeneous wireless networks, more and more mobile devices equipped with multiple network interfaces. The mobile devices, which have integrated multi-homing technology, can transmit data through multiple network interfaces to improve the quality of data transmission for users. The advantages of multi-homing technology have contributed to the rapid development of multipath protocols. Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) is an extension of the traditional Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which can take advantage of the capabilities of multiple network interfaces to simultaneously make use of multiple paths for data transmission, aiming at improving the performance of the data delivery. Although the multi-homing mobile devices configuring MPTCP protocol can obtain a lot of benefits, the current MPTCP path selection mechanism is too simple resulting in some concerns. So, a multi-attribute aware path selection approach for MPTCP (MPTCP-MAPS) is proposed in the paper, which jointly taking the Round-Trip Time (RTT) and the packet loss rate (Loss) of transport layer into account for efficient data delivery. MPTCP-MAPS designs a Multi-attribute path switch Prober (MP) to enhance the efficiency of the path selection mechanism. The results, which are gained from a closing realistic simulation topology, demonstrate how MPTCP-MAPS’ path selection approach is superior to the current MPTCP path selection mechanism in terms of continuity of mobile services and performance in heterogeneous wireless networks.