Performance analysis of multi-homed transport protocols with network failure tolerance

This paper studies the performance of multi-homed transport protocols tolerant of network failure. It evaluates the performance of different retransmission policies combined with path failure detection thresholds, infinite or finite receive buffers for various path bandwidths, delays and loss rate conditions through SCTP simulation. The results show that retransmission policies perform differently with different path failure detection threshold configurations. It identifies that retransmission of all data on an alternate path with the path failure detection threshold set to zero performs best in symmetric path conditions but its performance degrades acutely in asymmetric path conditions even when the alternate path delay is shorter than the primary path delay. It illustrates that retransmission of all data on the same path with the path failure detection threshold set to one or zero gives the most stable performance in all path configurations.