IP packet interleaving for UDP bursty losses

The bursty nature of losses over the Internet is constantly asking for effective solutions. In this work, we use a comprehensive approach to study packet interleaving for coping with loss burstiness. Our aim is to assess if and how packet interleaving can be employed in real networks at the IP layer and what benefits real UDP-based applications may expect. Through an analytical study we determine the interleaving configuration to be used as a function of the loss characteristics. Then, in simulation we confirm these findings and highlight also potential counter effects. Afterwards, we design and develop a real application for packet interleaving. We move a step ahead towards real networks using a testbed that comprises an emulated WAN. Thanks to it, we study and solve a number of issues arising in real environments such as network dynamics and interleaving performance. Finally, we deploy the packet interleaver in the wild and we study the improvements achievable in general and by a real application. Our work shows that providing benefits to real applications is not an easy task. However, our packet interleaver can effectively decorrelate losses at the IP layer in real networks and highly increase real application performance, for example, video distortion can be reduced 65%.