Detecting Shared Congested Router for Mobile Communication Using Multiple-Interface Devices

This paper presents an end-to-end algorithm for detecting a shared congested router in the internet when communication is established using multiple paths between wireless devices endowed with multiple interfaces (e.g., LTE, and WiFi). The proposed technique is based on one way end-to- end delay observation of packets received through multiple paths at the end hosts to infer whether or not the flows share the same congested router. With very different statistics on the wireless access delays encountered across different interfaces in practical scenarios, this paper describes techniques for estimating queuing delay variations for each path from one way end-to-end delay observations. The proposed scheme does not make use of exclusive probing packets, but instead uses the data packets that are transmitted and received through multiple paths to infer the path´s one way delay characteristics. Simulation results assessing the performance of our proposed detection algorithm are provided for scenarios where wireless devices exchange traffic through its LTE and WiFi interface. With the recently proposed protocols such as multi path transmission control protocol (MPTCP), and multi path real time protocol (MPRTP) beginning to be embraced with increasing interests, this study becomes important as it enables the end hosts to perform efficient congestion control.