Deployable multipath communication scheme with sufficient performance data distribution method

Multi-homed environments are increasingly common, especially for mobile users. And several multipath communication techniques have been proposed, such as multipath TCP communication techniques. Multipath TCP techniques have potential to fully utilize multiple paths, but, these methods have difficulties in implementation and deployment, because users need to modify their applications or operating system or both. In this paper, we propose simple multipath communication technique, which we call Arrival-Time matching Load-Balancing (ATLB). ATLB is designed to be easily implementable on several environments. Besides, we also introduce overlay network approach which implicitly provides parallel data transfer scheme to users. The ATLB continuously calculates transmission delays of each path, including TCP queuing delay at a sender and network delay, and then sends a data segment through the TCP connection with the lowest delay. Simulation results show that ATLB realizes sufficient performance even in heterogeneous environments where the quality of paths differs. Measurement results over our wireless LAN test-bed system suggest that ATLB can fully utilize the aggregate available bandwidth over unstable multiple wireless links.