CRONets: Cloud-Routed Overlay Networks

Abstract

Overlay networking and ISP-assisted tunneling are effective solutions to overcome problematic BGP routes and bypass troublesome autonomous systems. Despite their demonstrated effectiveness, overlay support is not broadly available. In this paper, we propose Cloud-Routed Overlay Networks (CRONets), whereby users can readily build their own overlays using nodes from global and well-provisioned cloud providers like IBM Softlayer or Amazon EC2. While previous studies have demonstrated the benefits of overlay networks with the high-speed experimental Internet2 backbone, we are the first to evaluate the improvements in a realistic - cloud - setting. We conduct a large-scale experiment where we observe 6,600 Internet paths. The results show that CRONets improve the throughput for 78% of the default Internet paths with a median and average improvement factors of 1.67 and 3.27 times respectively, at a tenth of the cost of leasing private lines of comparable performance. We also performed a longitudinal measurement, and demonstrate that the performance gains are consistent over time with only a small number of overlay nodes needed to be deployed. However, given the size and dynamic nature of the Internet routing system (e.g., due to congestion and failures), selecting the proper path is still a challenging problem. To address it, we propose a novel solution based on the newly-introduced MPTCP extensions. Our experiments show that MPTCP can achieve the maximum observed throughput across the different overlay paths.