pcp: Internet Latency Estimation Using CDN Replicas

Abstract

Interactive mobile Internet applications have become increasingly common and necessary to perform everyday tasks such as augmented reality, online gaming, video chat, and cloud-based voice recognition. These applications speed up their communications by connecting users to the closest servers and clustering nearby users together. In replica server selection and client clustering, determination of the closest host quickly and accurately is crucial to interactive application responses and the satisfaction of users' expectations. Researchers commonly use latency as the primary metric of network proximity and have developed various latency approximation tools. However, these tools do not yet offer an attractive balance of measurement accuracy, scalability, and maintainability. In this paper, we propose a new latency estimation system for arbitrary hosts using host-to-CDN latency measurements. Compared to existing latency estimation tools, our technique offers superior coverage of the IP address space and latency estimation accuracy. With improved coverage and accuracy of latency estimation it will become easier to establish low latency connections between hosts in a network, improving the responsiveness of interactive Internet applications.