Mobile real-time video streaming (RTVS) demands ultra-low latency to preserve content timeliness. Packet loss in mobile networks significantly inflates frame latency and thus degrades the quality of experience (QoE). As a promising solution, Forward Error Correction (FEC) encoding has been widely deployed in RTVS systems to recover from packet loss by introducing redundancy. However, existing schemes focus on per-frame FEC protection, failing to optimize QoE because they cannot precisely allocate redundancy to handle burst loss events. These events typically occur at the single-frame level, but can be smoothed out at the multi-frame level. We propose Breath, an adaptive FEC scheme that dynamically adjusts the protection boundary based on network and video dynamics. We have implemented Breath in a RTVS system and evaluated it in emulated mobile networks using network traces collected from the production system. Results show that, compared to state-of-the-art FEC schemes, Breath reduces deadline missing rate by 17.2%-22.5% while improving the average video bitrate by 10.6%-14.2%.

Packet classification is a fundamental operation in modern network systems, playing a central role in traffic management, security enforcement, and policy execution. While traditional algorithms have achieved low lookup latency in static scenarios, emerging applications impose more demanding requirements—not only fast lookup, but also high-frequency online updates and strong scalability. Existing approaches often struggle to handle large rule sets or support rules with an increasing number of matching fields, making them unsuitable for dynamic and large-scale network environments.In this work, we propose TupleChain for fast on-line update table lookup with multifaceted scalability.We group rules based on their masks, each maintained using a hash table, and explore the connections among rule groups to skip unnecessary hash probes for faster searches. We show via theoretical analysis and extensive experiments that the proposed scheme offers competitive computational complexity, strong scalability, and high performance in both search and update operations. TupleChain can process millions of packets per second, while simultaneously handling millions of on-line updates per second at the same time, and its lookup speed remains stable even when processing large flow table with 10 million rules or entries containing up to 100 match fields.

Packet processing in modern routers and switches relies on rule matching, primarily performed by two core modules: IP prefix lookup for next-hop determination and packet classification for multi-field policy enforcement. However, most existing algorithms are rule-centric and assume uniform rule access, overlooking the highly skewed nature of real-world network traffic. Such mismatch between static rule organization and dynamic traffic behavior leads to inefficiency in both lookup and classification. To address this limitation, we propose a Traffic-aware Lookup and Forwarding (TLF) framework that leverages traffic measurement with lookup operations, enabling online adaptation to dynamic traffic patterns and frequent rule updates. Experimental results demonstrate that TLF provides 1.04×–3.37× speedups for lookup and forwarding over state-of-the-art algorithms, while substantially reducing both memory overhead and construction time. Furthermore, integrating TLF into Vector Packet Processor (VPP) and Open vSwitch (OVS) results in throughput improvements of 2.61× and 4.88×, respectively.

360-degree video is a panoramic video technology designed to offer audience an immersive visual experience. In Motion Constrained Tile Set (MCTS)-based streaming schemes, the server only updates Field-Of-View (FOV) coordinates when codec generating keyframes, thus the keyframe interval significantly impacts FOV updates and interactivity. However, reducing the keyframe interval poses greater challenges for network transmission and encoding/decoding overhead. To address these issues, we design and implement AKI360, a 360-degree video streaming system with an Adaptive Keyframe Interval (AKI) mechanism along with Quantization Parameter (QP) adjustments. Extensive experiments show that AKI360 reduces the motion stall duration by 31% to 74% and FOV update interval by 78% to 86% comparing with the real-time approaches, and eliminates the blank area in the best-case comparing with the state-of-the-art pre-encoded approach. Meanwhile, AKI360 improves the video quality by up to 0.78 decrease in NIQE while maintaining comparable frame rate.

The evolution of mobile networks toward ubiquitous connectivity envisioned by International Mobile Telecommunications-2030 has caused a surge in control plane traffic. A deep understanding of the control plane's internal characteristics and mechanisms is crucial for delivering optimal services. However, existing measurements often neglect the control plane or treat it as an opaque box, focusing on overall performance instead of its intrinsic characteristics.

Packet classification is a critical component for accurately categorizing traffic in network systems. The efficiency of packet classification algorithms is primarily determined by two key factors: the classifier's data structure and the characteristics of the traffic being classified. While significant efforts have been made to optimize data structures, the potential of leveraging traffic characteristics remains underexplored. In this study, we revisit the network dataplane by integrating the network measurement module with the packet classification module. We propose an innovative Network-aware Packet Classification system (NPC) that utilizes sketch techniques to extract network traffic features. These features guide the construction of decision trees, enabling efficient and adaptable packet classification across diverse network environments. Experimental results demonstrate that the NPC achieves speedups ranging from 1.86× to 23.88× over state-of-the-art algorithms, while significantly reducing memory overhead and construction time, highlighting its practical value in real-world scenarios. Furthermore, integrating NPC into Open vSwitch (OVS) yields throughput improvements of 10.71× to 13.01× compared to the native OVS.

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been used in congestion control algorithms (CCAs) for its ability to adapt to different network environments. However, its effectiveness is often hindered by the limited availability of training data and constrained training scales. While it has been proved that combining rule-based (expert) CCAs as a guide for DRL (namely hybrid CCAs) can address this limitation, we show through experimental measurements that rule-based CCAs potentially restrict action exploration of DRL models and may cause the DRL models to overly rely on them for higher reward gains. To address this gap, this paper proposes Marten, a framework that improves the effectiveness of rule-based CCAs for DRL. Marten’s key innovations include an entropy-based dynamic exploration scheme that expands the exploration of DRL, and a reward adjustment scheme to prevent the DRL models’ over-reliance on experts in hybrid CCAs. We have implemented Marten in both simulation platform OpenAI Gym and deployment platform QUIC. Experimental results in both emulated and production networks demonstrate Marten can improve throughput by 0.31% and reduce latency by 12.69% on average compared to the state-of-the-art hybrid CCAs. Compared to BBR, Marten achieves a 2.79% increase in throughput and an 11.73% reduction in latency on average.

IP lookup aims at identifying the longest prefix match within routing tables to determine the forwarding path for packets. The increase in IPv6 address length makes IP lookup particularly difficult, requiring more efficient lookup mechanisms to handle the expanded address space and ensure the timely and accurate routing of packets. Existing IPv6 lookup algorithms focus on constructing efficient data structures to enhance lookup performance. However, given the inherent characteristics of network traffic distribution and the varying hit probabilities of nodes within the lookup structure, there is still room for optimization. Our study introduces a new IPv6 routing lookup scheme that utilizes the characteristics of network traffic to guide the construction of lookup data structures. Experimental results indicate that the lookup performance of the traffic-adaptive algorithm is 1.1 to 2.2 times that of conventional algorithms. Additionally, our work designs a traffic-adaptive routing system, which includes an adaptive cache structure capable of responding to dynamic changes in network traffic. The throughput of our proposed system is 1.7 to 2.8 times that of systems implementing only basic algorithms.

Many mobile devices are usually equipped with multiple interfaces, providing the opportunity of using multipath transport protocols such as Multipath TCP (MPTCP) to boost performance. The multipath congestion control algorithm (CCA) in MPTCP plays a vital role in achieving high performance and multipath fairness in mobile environments where the paths are often heterogeneous and dynamic. Such environments are very challenging for existing one-size-fits-all CCAs to achieve high performance while ensuring multipath fairness. In this paper, we present a novel framework, Disco, to dynamically select the most appropriate CCAs for MPTCP subflows at runtime according to the perceived network condition. Extensive experiments show that compared with existing multipath CCAs, the proposed solution can improve the average throughput by 19% – 25% and reduce the average queuing delay by up to 21 % while it barely does harm to multipath fairness.

Network monitoring systems struggle with the issue that the measurement data is incomplete, with only a subset of origin-destination (OD) pairs or time slots observed, due to the high deployment and measurement cost. Recent studies show that the missing data can be inferred from partial measurements using neural network models and tensor methods. However, these recovery approaches fail to achieve accuracy, adaptability and high speed, simultaneously. In this paper, we propose RecMon, a deep learning-based data recovery system that satisfies the above three criteria. A global spatio-temporal attention mechanism and a data augmentation algorithm are proposed to improve the recovery accuracy. A semi-supervised learning-based scheme is devised for fast and effective model updates. We conduct extensive experiments on three real-world datasets to compare RecMon with four state-of-the-art methods in terms of online recovery performance. The experimental results show that RecMon can adapt to the latest state of the network and accurately recover network measurement data in less than 100 milliseconds. When 90% of the data is missing, the recovery accuracy of RecMon improves over the strongest baseline method by 22.7%, 16.0%, and 8.2% in the three datasets, respectively.

By deploying virtualized network elements (hosts, switches, routers, links, etc.) on clusters of commodity machines, distributed network emulations (DNE) closely mimic the behaviors of network systems and provide real-time interactions and analysis for network service management. However, DNE encounters scalability challenges when faced with large network topologies. These challenges can be boiled down to the assignment problem: to which physical machine each virtualized network element should be assigned so that the largest possible network topology can be emulated? In this paper, we tackle this problem from an algorithmic perspective. We first propose TBR (topology balancing relaxation) as the relaxation of the assignment problem. TBR tries to maintain a balance of the hardware resource consumption, by minimizing the maximum inter-machine bandwidth. We further develop TBS (topology balancing solver), which combines mathematical techniques with multi-level algorithms to solve TBR efficiently. We integrate TBR and TBS into MaxiNet, a famous distributed network emulator. Experimental results show that with the same available physical resources, TBR and TBS can improve emulation scalability by up to$4.7\times $compared to baselines.

Open vSwitch (OVS) is a widely used virtual switch designed to provide virtual network capabilities in virtualized environments. As the core of OVS, the packet classification task is time-consuming with the implementation of Tuple Space Search (TSS), a classical hash table-based algorithm that can achieve fast rule updating but at the cost of the reduced packet classification throughput. However, because of the central role of OVS in a virtualized environment, its performance is of utmost importance and we need mechanisms that can achieve high update rate along with high packet classification throughput. In this paper, we compare the performance of several classification algorithms and show that Tuple Merge Relaxation (TMR) is able to achieve the highest sustainable classification throughput while dealing with updates. After integrating it into OVS and evaluating its in vivo performance, we observe that TMR-OVS can achieve up to$24.7\times $higher throughput compared with native OVS. Moreover, we show that TMR-OVS is also effective against Tuple Space Explosion attack effectively and maintains OVS throughput under this attack.

Packet classification is a critical component in network appliances. Software Defined Networking and cloud computing update the rulesets frequently for flexible policy configuration. Tuple Space Search (TSS), implemented in Open vSwitch (OVS), achieves fast rule updating at the sacrifice of the classification rate. In TSS, each tuple is managed by a hash table and classifying a packet needs to go through all hash tables. Merging tuples can reduce the number of hash tables, but inevitably increases the hash conflicts that may even worsen the classification performance in some cases. No existing algorithm meets the need of both fast packet classification and online rule updating. In this paper, we propose Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)-based Range Partition (CRP) to achieve fast packet classification and online update simultaneously. CRP exploits CNN-based image recognition to quickly partition tuples into range spaces upon the change of ruleset distribution, which reduces hash operations while avoiding rule overlapping caused by hashing many rules to the same location of the hash table. Experimental results demonstrate that CRP achieves$3.2\times $classification speed and$4.2\times $update speed on average compared with state-of-the-art algorithms. We also implement CRP in OVS. The throughput of CRP-OVS is$10\times $that of native OVS.

Like IP lookup in the traditional networking, name lookup is a key technology for packet forwarding in the named data networking (NDN). However, unlike fixed-length IP addresses, such hierarchical names are of variable and unlimited length in theory. Both the large-scale name prefix database and high-frequency name update bring unprecedented challenges to the high-performance packet forwarding in the NDN. However, most existing approaches have drawbacks, such as the complex structure, the frequent memory access, and the time-consuming encoding, which make them difficult to meet these requirements. In this paper, we propose CoDE, an effective name lookup approach, to achieve both fast name lookup and update using conflict-driven encoding. CoDE has the following features: 1) The compact and scalable data structure can be stored in the cache; 2) The efficient index can fast locate the possible names and thus significantly speed up the name lookup and prefix update; and 3) The conflict-driven mechanism can greatly reduce the number of name components to be encoded. Experiments using real name prefix databases give an integrated evaluation. Compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms, CoDE achieves a high-performance name lookup which is an order of magnitude faster than the other algorithms on average and performs a fast prefix update which is twenty times that of the other algorithms on average. Moreover, CoDE saves at least half memory footprint of that of the other algorithms.