Join and spilt TCP for SDN networks: Architecture, implementation, and evaluation

While most existing works are focused either on aggregation-only or split-only frameworks, we propose a more practical 'join-and-split' working prototype using SDN. To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, we implement a composite join-and-split TCP architecture that uses efficient mechanisms to synchronize different join and split network points. We have used a 'linked-ACK' mechanism to preserve the end-to-end semantics of flows that are separated by the join and split network points. With extensive performance evaluation study, we show the improved performance achieved by our framework in both wired and wireless environments. We describe the implementation of aggregation/splitting of TCP flows intuitively through state diagram. We are hopeful that this paper serves as system-level guide for the research community.