Adaptive Address Family Selection for Latency-Sensitive Applications on Dual-Stack Hosts

Latency is becoming a key factor of performance for Internet applications and has triggered a number of changes in its protocols. Our work revisits the impact on latency of address family selection in dual-stack hosts. Through RIPE Atlas measurements, we analyse the address families latency difference and establish two requirements based on our findings for a latency-focused selection mechanism. First, the address family should be chosen per destination. Second, the choice should be able to evolve over time dynamically.

We propose and implement a solution formulated as an online learning problem balancing exploration and exploitation. We validate our solution in simulations based on RIPE Atlas measurements, implement and evaluate our prototype inside a DNS resolver in four access networks using Chrome and popular web services. We demonstrate the ability of our solution to converge towards the lowest-latency address family and improve the latency of transport connections used by applications.