An evaluation of multi-path Transmission Control Protocol (M/TCP) with robust acknowledgement schemes

We propose a new end-to-end transport protocol called Multi-path Transmission Control Protocol (M/TCP) and its two robust acknowledgement (ACK) schemes. Our protocol is designed as an alternative TCP option to improve reliability and performance of the Internet. The M/TCP sender simultaneously transmits data via multiple controlled paths to the receiver. Our protocol requires no modification in IP layer. Two M/TCP endpoints establish multiple paths between them by subscribing to multiple ISPs. The two robust ACK schemes proposed in this paper aim at improving M/TCP performance over the Internet with high packet loss in ACK channels. Performances between our protocol and TCP Reno are compared in terms of throughput and fairness by using ns2 simulator. Simulation results indicate that M/TCP achieves higher throughput than TCP Reno in situation of random drop and burst traffic with small buffer size. When there is network congestion on reverse path, M/TCP with the proposed robust ACK schemes performs better than M/TCP with the conventional immediate ACK scheme.