Experimental Performance Analysis of Multipath TCP

Multiple wireless interfaces in modern devices today have given great promise in enhancing multimedia service delivery over wireless networks. However, the IP coupled nature of the conventional TCP/IP protocol inhibits the simultaneous use of these interfaces. Multipath TCP (MPTCP), a protocol undergoing IETF standardization has been developed to simultaneously use multiple interfaces for delivery of services over the Internet. Unlike other earlier studies that use simulations, stationary scenario, and Advanced Video Codec-Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (AVC-DASH) to study MPTCP, this thesis uses mobile scenario, real measurements, and Ultra High Definition, High Efficiency Video Codec (UHD HEVC-DASH) to evaluate the performance of MPTCP. The findings show that MPTCP gives a higher performance in terms of throughput, shorter download time, and increased bandwidth compared to Single Path TCP (SPTCP). The results from delivery of multimedia services using UHD HEVC- DASH streaming, though specific instead of general, reveal that under balanced and unbalanced network paths, MPTCP offers good Quality of Experience (QoE) compared to SPTCP. However, with variability in latency, and packet loss between paths, MPTCP underperforms compared to SPTCP in terms of video buffering in the unbalanced network case, and high packet retransmission rate in either balanced or unbalanced network paths.