A Split Stack Approach to Mobility-Providing Performance-Enhancing Proxies

Many varieties of performance-enhancing proxies (PEPs) have been proposed to improve TCP performance and/or provide seamless mobility. One simple, albeit limited technique is the application-layer proxy. It too can isolate degraded last-mile link performance from the transmission of data across the rest of the network. While Web services on proxies are common, not all network applications will fit the traditional proxy model. We suggest using the proxy in a fashion that is fully compatible with all applications. In the split stack approach, the application runs on the client, but client networking library calls are executed on the proxy. The split stack architecture provides three major benefits, even with limited deployment: seamless handling of last-mile disconnects; mobility without MobileIP; and improved network performance. This paper outlines the split stack architecture, relates it to previous techniques, and provides some estimates of potential performance improvement.

Technical Report LU-CSE-02-012, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, November 2002.

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