PASTE: Protocol-agnostic Services & Transport Enrichment with intermediate Companion nodes

Abstract

The current socket API is one obstacle that hinders adoption of new transport protocols like e.g. SCTP, MPTCP, or DCCP. It requires an application to specify the desired transport protocol at the time of implementation. The drawback of this approach is: If new transport protocols are introduced, existing applications need to be modified in order to support them. Therefore applications should select abstract transport services rather than specific protocols. We propose Protocol-agnostic Services & Transport Enrichment (PASTE): An application-to-network middle-ware that pushes the protocol selection below the application layer based on the selected transport service. It also handles other networking functionality commonly done by applications, e.g., name-to-address resolution. To further enhance the offered transport services we also introduce intermediate Companion nodes within the network, to enrich different transport services with added functionality like, e.g., in-network data buffering or on-the-fly data compression.