Transparent cloud access performance augmentation via an MPTCP-LISP connection proxy

The use by a growing number of users of Cloud-based services requires an adaptation of the network technologies used to access them. We propose to combine two novel protocols at the state of the art at Cloud access middle-boxes to better profit from spare unused network path diversity. The first protocol, Multipath TCP, allows creating multiple TCP/IP sub flows, as much as needed. The second, the Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol (LISP), can be used to route the subflows on different wide-area network paths, possibly disjoint, and also allows native support for seamless virtual machine migrations. In this paper we specify how we can combine these two protocols to increase the bandwidth available to access applications run in multi-homed data-centers. We describe how these protocols can be integrated into a Cloud access middle-box. By means of a combined MPTCP-LISP access proxy, the acceleration is transparent to the user terminal that does not necessitate any upgrade. We provide the detailed system-level architecture based on open source code, and we document results from preliminary experimentations on one of two targeted use-cases. The evaluations conducted show that the overhead generated by our solution remains moderate despite the various system-level steps required to translate incoming TCP packets into MPTCP-LISP packets then routed over different IP paths.