Addition of explicit congestion notification (ECN) to multipath transmission control protocol (M/TCP)

Abstract

In our previous work, a multipath transmission control protocol (M/TCP) has been proposed for improving reliability and performance of the communications over the Internet. It does not require any changes in network infrastructure, but does require some modifications at the end hosts to establish multiple paths. Performance advantages of M/TCP when co-existing with TCP Reno have been reported; however, when multiple M/TCP connections simultaneously compete for bandwidth, they achieve different throughput, resulting in bad fairness. Addition of explicit congestion notification (ECN) to M/TCP is proposed. Performance studies of the ECN-capable M/TCP are conducted by using the ns2 simulator. Results indicate that the addition of ECN improves not only fairness but also throughput for the M/TCP end hosts.