Whack-a-Mole: Deterministic Packet Spraying Across Multiple Network Paths

Abstract

We present Whack-a-Mole, a deterministic packet spraying algorithm for distributing packets across multiple network paths with provably tight discrepancy bounds. The algorithm is motivated by large-scale distributed AI/ML training and inference workloads, where collective completion time (CCT) and effective training time ratio (ETTR) are highly sensitive to tail latency and transport imbalance. Whack-a-Mole represents the path profile as a discrete allocation of $m$ selection units across $n$ paths and uses a bit-reversal counter to choose a path for each packet. We prove that the discrepancy between expected and actual packet counts per path is bounded by $O(\log m)$ over any contiguous packet sequence. The algorithm responds quickly to congestion feedback by reducing allocations to degraded paths and redistributing load to healthier ones. This combination of deterministic distribution, low per-packet overhead, and compatibility with erasure-coded transport makes Whack-a-Mole an effective building block for multipath transport protocols that aim to minimize CCT and maximize GPU utilization.