PEMI: Transparent Performance Enhancements for QUIC

Fuente: arXiv
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Zhang, Jie, Zhang, Lei, Wang, Ziyi, Sun, Chenxiang, Hu, Yuming, Xie, Xiaohui, Lai, Zeqi, Cui, Yong
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866911445198831616
author Zhang, Jie
Zhang, Lei
Wang, Ziyi
Sun, Chenxiang
Hu, Yuming
Xie, Xiaohui
Lai, Zeqi
Cui, Yong
author_facet Zhang, Jie
Zhang, Lei
Wang, Ziyi
Sun, Chenxiang
Hu, Yuming
Xie, Xiaohui
Lai, Zeqi
Cui, Yong
contents QUIC, as the transport layer of the next-generation Web stack (HTTP/3), natively provides security and performance improvements over TCP-based stacks. However, since QUIC provides end-to-end encryption for both data and packet headers, in-network assistance like Performance-Enhancing Proxy (PEP) is unavailable for QUIC. To achieve the similar optimization as TCP, some works seek to collaborate endpoints and middleboxes to provide in-network assistance for QUIC. But involving both host and in-network devices increases the difficulty of deployment in the Internet. In this paper, by analyzing the QUIC standard, implementations, and the locality of application traffic, we identify opportunities for transparent middleboxes to measure RTT and infer packet loss for QUIC connections, despite the absence of plaintext ACK information. We then propose PEMI as a concrete system that continuously measures RTT and infers lost packets, enabling fast retransmissions for QUIC. PEMI enables performance enhancement for QUIC in a completely transparent manner, without requiring any explicit cooperation from the endpoints. To keep fairness, PEMI employs a delay-based congestion control and utilizes feedback-based methods to enforce CWND. Extensive evaluation results, including Mininet and trace-driven dynamic experiments, show that PEMI can significantly improve the performance of QUIC. For example, in the Mininet experiments, PEMI increases the goodput of file transfers by up to 2.5$\times$, and reduces the 90th percentile jitter of RTC frames by 20-75%.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_12732
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PEMI: Transparent Performance Enhancements for QUIC
Zhang, Jie
Zhang, Lei
Wang, Ziyi
Sun, Chenxiang
Hu, Yuming
Xie, Xiaohui
Lai, Zeqi
Cui, Yong
Networking and Internet Architecture
QUIC, as the transport layer of the next-generation Web stack (HTTP/3), natively provides security and performance improvements over TCP-based stacks. However, since QUIC provides end-to-end encryption for both data and packet headers, in-network assistance like Performance-Enhancing Proxy (PEP) is unavailable for QUIC. To achieve the similar optimization as TCP, some works seek to collaborate endpoints and middleboxes to provide in-network assistance for QUIC. But involving both host and in-network devices increases the difficulty of deployment in the Internet. In this paper, by analyzing the QUIC standard, implementations, and the locality of application traffic, we identify opportunities for transparent middleboxes to measure RTT and infer packet loss for QUIC connections, despite the absence of plaintext ACK information. We then propose PEMI as a concrete system that continuously measures RTT and infers lost packets, enabling fast retransmissions for QUIC. PEMI enables performance enhancement for QUIC in a completely transparent manner, without requiring any explicit cooperation from the endpoints. To keep fairness, PEMI employs a delay-based congestion control and utilizes feedback-based methods to enforce CWND. Extensive evaluation results, including Mininet and trace-driven dynamic experiments, show that PEMI can significantly improve the performance of QUIC. For example, in the Mininet experiments, PEMI increases the goodput of file transfers by up to 2.5$\times$, and reduces the 90th percentile jitter of RTC frames by 20-75%.
title PEMI: Transparent Performance Enhancements for QUIC
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12732