[LINFO2142] Project : Comparing TCP and QUIC through a satellite link

Project for LINFO2142, by Samy Bettaieb and Jonathan de Salle

The report of the project can be found in report.rst.

A specific README is available in each folder when necessary.

Experimental set up

Prerequisite

To reproduce our experience you need install the following tools with the corresponding versions (see the commit id) :

• https://github.com/cloudflare/quiche
  • id of the used commit : c885a71fd58c0c610e9e209f210b1951db81d6c5
• https://github.com/curl/curl/blob/master/docs/HTTP3.md#quiche-version
  • id of the used commit : c8a3046555378f81b22d51e3887df8a5cf1ab5bf
• https://github.com/quiclog/pcap2qlog
  • id of the used commit : 62dbd8be1d3a3a040d1f3afc400bebfaa79658d7
  • You have to apply a patch to make it work (thanks to François Michel). You can find the patch in the folder patch. You have to move it in your pcap2qlog directory and apply it using git apply <patch file>, then you rebuild pcap2qlog using npx tsc.
• Wireshark-Tshark, v3.4.8

Methodology

Client characteristics :

• Operating System: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
• Kernel: Linux 5.11.0-41-generic
• Architecture: x86-64

To compare the performance of TCP and QUIC, we decided to download files from our NGINX server using curl with the HTTP3 integration (quiche version).

Download examples :

Download using QUIC :

curl --http3 -w "@curl-format.txt" -X GET -k  https://linfo2142-grp2.info.ucl.ac.be/files/empty_file -o test

Download using TCP :

curl -w "@curl-format.txt" -X GET -k  https://linfo2142-grp2.info.ucl.ac.be/files/empty_file -o test

Capture using tshark :

After closing all the applications that are using the network connection, you can run the following command :

tshark -w path/capture.pcap -i <network interface> port 443

In another terminal you can launch the download (using curl).

When the download is complete you can stop tshark using kill or by typing ctrl+c in the first terminal.