Transport layer multihoming for fault tolerance in FCS networks

In this paper, we document a potential inefficiency in the current SCTP retransmission policy. The current scheme intends to improve the chance of success by exploiting the redundant paths between multihomed endpoints, but we have found that the current SCTP retransmission policy often degrades performance. We comparatively evaluate an alternative retransmission policy and show that the current SCTP retransmission policy unexpectedly performs worse under certain conditions. Our analysis exposes the problem and we discuss four possible solutions.