Multihomed Data Transfer in Heterogeneous Networks using SCTP

Nowadays, mobile devices are equipped with multiple network interfaces. Multihoming refers to a device connected to more than one network. However, it uses only one network interface at a time to transmit data to the destination. The data transmission rate can be improved by utilizing all available network interfaces simultaneously. Internet's current transport protocols, TCP or UDP do not support multi-homing. The recent IETF transport layer protocol referred as, the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) supports multi-homing at the transport layer. However, SCTP does not support load sharing between multiple paths to increase the throughput. The Concurrent Multipath Transfer (CMT) derived from SCTP that allows load sharing in multi-homed network environments. But, parallel data transfer in heterogeneous network paths causes sender buffer blocking and receiver buffer blocking problems. This book addresses and rectifies the various issues arisen due to transmitting the data over multiple paths simultaneously over the heterogeneous networks. This book introduces new concepts & techniques to improve load sharing between multiple paths to increase the data transmission rates.