Gateway Buffer Offloading for Low-Latency Packet Retransmission
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Solution Overview
Problem
Network congestion and complexity lead to increased latency and dropped packets, particularly in wireless communication networks, which can be exacerbated by client devices entering sleep states or being compute-limited, leading to additional latency in retransmissions.
Innovation Solution
Client devices offload network overhead operations, such as retransmissions, to a gateway device that maintains a buffer and manages retransmissions, reducing latency by implementing a modeled transport layer stack to handle packet retransmissions efficiently.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If client devices perform retransmission operations locally, then retransmission can be handled immediately, but device power consumption increases and battery life decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the retransmission function from the client device and relocates it to the gateway device. The gateway maintains buffer copies of transmitted packets and performs retransmissions independently, allowing client devices to enter sleep states without compromising communication reliability. This extraction resolves the contradiction by eliminating the need for client devices to maintain active processing for retransmission operations.
Solution Approach 2:
The gateway device acts as an intermediary between the client device and the network. It buffers packets and manages retransmissions on behalf of client devices, serving as a mediator that handles the computationally intensive retransmission tasks. This intermediary approach allows client devices to conserve energy while the gateway ensures reliable packet delivery through proactive retransmission management.
2Loss of time
If client devices remain awake to handle retransmissions, then retransmission latency is reduced, but battery life decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway device performs preliminary actions by maintaining buffer copies of packets in advance. When packet loss is detected, the gateway can immediately retransmit from its buffers without waiting for the client device to wake up and request retransmission. This preliminary buffering action eliminates the latency penalty that would otherwise require the client device to remain awake, thereby extending battery life while maintaining low retransmission latency.
3Ease of operation
If client devices process network overhead operations, then network management is handled at the source, but device compute resources are consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts network overhead processing tasks (retransmission management, buffer maintenance) from the client device and relocates them to the gateway device. This extraction allows client devices to focus on application-level operations while the gateway handles the computationally intensive network management functions, resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and power consumption.
4Speed
If gateway maintains buffer copies for retransmission, then retransmission speed increases, but gateway memory usage increases
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway maintains buffer copies for retransmission purposes, implementing partial buffering rather than full duplication of all network traffic. The buffer size and scope are optimized to provide sufficient retransmission capability while controlling memory consumption. This partial action approach achieves fast retransmission speed without requiring excessive gateway memory resources.
Data Source
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AI summary
Offloading of network processing is provided. A method performed by a client device (305) can include establishing a transport layer connection (405) with a server (315) over a network via an access point (320) or a modem (325) in wireless communication with the client device (305). The method can include establishing a pipe (430) with one of the access point (320) or the modem (325) to transfer data. The method can include communicating, via the pipe (430) to one of the access point (320) or the modem (325), a copy of one or more buffers (420) of one or more sockets used for the transport layer connection (405) by the client device (305). The access point (320) or the modem (325) can be configured to use the copy of the one or more of buffers (420) to handle re-transmission of one or more packets to the server (315) via the transport layer connection (405) instead of the client device (305).