SCTP Throughput Improvement through Automatic Path Switching

Abstract

In this paper, the most current domestic and abroad research is still on the theory and simulation stage. Research for the promotion and optimization on SCTP in practical networks still lags behind in the following aspects: (1) Test bed platform is still required for optimization of handoff execution process and handoff decision in practical physical networks. (2) Path bandwidth is required as an important parameter in some transport layer congestion control mechanisms; optimization of handoff execution process and handoff decision design, but the typical SCTP protocol stack implementation is still lack of path bandwidth estimating mechanism. (3) NAT (Network Address Translation) devices, normally existing in the current IP network, are mostly not available on the SCTP protocol support, resulting in SCTP packet transmission blocking problems, which affect the promotion of the SCTP protocol. In this paper, we propose to improve the SCTP throughput based on automatic path switching between primary path and secondary path according to the path conditions. The simulation results show that the SCTP throughput is improved significantly.