SCTP Throughput Improvement with Best Load Sharing Based on Multihoming

The Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) is a new transport layer protocol. Multihoming is one of the most important features in SCTP, which can be used by the data sender to send data to a receiver through different paths. Although SCTP provides support for multihoming, the basic reason for such a provision was to improve reliability of associations. Currently, simultaneous transfer of new data to multiple paths is not allowed in SCTP. We can gain significant throughput improvement by simultaneously transferring new data across multiple paths to the receiver. In this paper, the best load sharing using SCTP multihoming is discussed and the techniques are analyzed. In order to achieve load sharing, original congestion control mechanism should be modified to implement load sharing. The new algorithm, split fast retransmission is the key of SCTP load sharing. Finally, through NS-2 simulations we prove that the proposed scheme is effective.