Aeacus: QUIC-Powered Low-Latency and Strong-Consistency Name Resolution in 5G

The Domain Name System (DNS) serves as a foundational networking service, yet its inherent time-to-live (TTL)-based cache mechanism presents a conundrum—striving for both low query latency and robust cache consistency proves challenging. To address this, we introduce Aeacus: a middleware seamlessly integrated into the 5G core, engineered to optimize name resolution for QUIC. Aeacus adeptly fortifies DNS with substantial cache consistency by capitalizing on QUIC handshake states to detect cache inconsistency, without compromising query delay. Furthermore, Aeacus orchestrates the amalgamation of DNS queries and QUIC handshake messages, effectively truncating one round-trip of message exchange and reviving expired DNS cache to bolster cache hit rates. Our dual-pronged deployment, encompassing both commercial and test 5G networks, demonstrates Aeacus’ prowess. In direct comparison with DNS, Aeacus successfully truncates connection setup delays by a remarkable 8.9% to 71.8%, all while introducing a mere 5.9% overhead attributed to supplementary packet processing and forwarding expenses. Importantly, existing DNS-based systems reap the benefits of Aeacus without necessitating modifications. We demonstrate Aeacus’ seamless enhancement of DNS-based load balancers, extending QUIC's 0-RTT handshake to include 0-RTT connection setup and service migration.