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 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.

翻译：延迟正成为互联网应用性能的关键因素，并引发了协议层面的多项变革。本研究重新审视了双栈主机中地址族选择对延迟的影响。通过RIPE Atlas测量分析，我们研究了地址族的延迟差异，并基于发现结果提出了延迟优先选择机制的两项要求：第一，应针对每个目标独立选择地址族；第二，选择策略需具备动态演进能力。我们提出并实现了一种将问题建模为在线学习问题的解决方案，该方案平衡了探索与利用机制。基于RIPE Atlas测量数据进行仿真验证后，我们在四个接入网络中通过Chrome浏览器和主流Web服务完成了原型系统的部署与评估。实验证明，该方案能够收敛至最低延迟地址族，并有效降低应用传输连接的延迟。