Multipath TCP for heterogeneous environments

Abstract

Out-of-order packet problem incurs severe degradation of throughput performance of Multipath TCP (MPTCP) with heterogeneous communication links. In this paper, we propose an extended version of MPTCP to solve the out-of-order packet problem. The proposed method defines two types of ACK: Regular ACK and Extended ACK. When a receiver receives a data packet, the receiver sends a Regular ACK to the original path through which the data is transmitted, and Extended ACKs to all the other paths. If the Extended ACK arrives earlier than the Regular ACK, the proposed method solves the out-of-order packet problem. We evaluate the performance of the proposed method via NS-3 computer simulations, and show that the proposed method can improve the throughput performance when RTT of paths is heterogeneous.