Multipath at the transport layer: An end-to-end resilience mechanism

Abstract--As society's dependence on network technology increases, the need for resilience and survivability in these services becomes increasingly apparent. Since the user experience is ultimately determined by the dependability of the end-to-end service, we address this issue at the transport layer. In this paper we introduce a resilient multipath selection algorithm, which obtains multiple end-to-end paths in the WAN context through cross-layer interaction with lower layers of the network. This cross-layer interface is provided by a thin internetwork protocol (PoMo) that supports heterogeneity at trust and policy boundaries. The result is a more resilient end-to-end service provided to applications by taking advantage of redundancy in the underlying physical network. We evaluate the efficiency tradeoffs of the multipath approach on both a synthetic topology and a tier 1 ISP's backbone network topology.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICUMT
• Authors: Justin P. Rohrer, Ramya Naidu, James P. G. Sterbenz
• Keywords: Communications, End-to-end Service, ICUMT 2009, Multiple End-to-end Paths, Resilient Multipath Selection