A Middleware-Level Parallel Transfer Technique over Multiple Network Interfaces

Network middleware is a software layer that provides abstract network APIs to hide the low-level technical details from users. Existing network middleware support single network interface and link (channel) message transfers. In this paper, we describe a middleware-level parallel transfer technique that utilizes multiple network interface units that may be connected through multiple networks. A prototype socket called MuniSocket (Multiple Network Interface Socket) has been implemented to provide this functionality. MuniSocket provides parallel message fragmentation and reconstruction mechanisms in addition to load balancing. It operates on any reliable transport protocol such as TCP and transparently provides an expandable high bandwidth solution that (1) reduces message transfer time, (2) provides fault tolerance, and (3) facilitates dynamic load balancing among the underlying multiple networks. The experimental evaluation of MuniSocket illustrates good performance gains, where a peak bandwidth of 187Mbps was achieved on two fast Ethernet networks.