MPUDP: Multipath Multimedia Transport Protocol over Overlay Network

Multipath transport in communication networks is gaining momentum due to its attractive features of increased reliability, aggregated bandwidth, fault tolerance, and load balancing. Multipath transport framework based on application-level relay (MPTF-AR) that uses overly network technique is regarded as a simple way to establish multipath transport scenario without any change on underlying network. However, existing multipath transport protocols are not suitable for MPTF-AR because they either work in multihomed scenario or cannot support transmission in overlay network. This paper proposes a transport protocol named multipath UDP (MPUDP) to support both reliable and unreliable transport in MPTF-AR. With the help from application and transport layer, MPUDP support precise performance detection and dynamic data distribution. End host uses two-level buffer to reorder packets. In addition, end hosts no longer keeps a congestion window and always send packets over optimal paths. Finally, extensive OMNeT++ simulations are conducted and show that MPUDP exploits the benefit of multipath transport.