A thin-layer protocol for utilizing multiple paths

Utilizing multiple paths between network hosts (such as robots or sensors) will improve network performance, path availability and connection reliability. This paper presents a cross layer multiple path approach named proxy server based multipath connection. Multiple paths are set up via a set of intermediate proxy servers using IP tunneling. Packet distribution and reassembly are achieved by inserting a thin layer between the network layer and the transport layer. On the sender side, packets are distributed across multiple paths based on predefined striping schemes. On the receiver side, a double buffer approach is proposed to solve the TCP sequence number persistent reordering problem. A prototype was implemented on the Linux and Windows systems. Experimental results show that the proposed approach can improve network throughput and is robust to network congestion and link breakage.