Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks

Zhongwei Zhang and Lu Jin Department of Mathematics and Computing

WITSP'06: 5th Workshop on the Internet, Telecommunication and Signal Processing, 11-13th, Dec 2006, Hobart

Outline
Motivation Introducing SCTP
What is SCTP Features of SCTP

Modification of SCTP
Modification of the Protocol Design of a Fuzzy Logic Estimator

Simulation
Simulated wireless network Experiment scenarios

Conclusion
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Motivation
Two popular transmission protocols (TCP and UDP) are
Initially designed for wired networks Suffering the head-of-line blocking Use one IP address. Vulnerable to network failures and DoS attacks

A transmission protocol for Wireless networks

Communication is characterized by higher transmission errors, Network or route failures are more likely. Denial-of-services SYN attacks

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

SCTP
SCTP is Stream Control Transmission Protocol, a reliable transport protocol
Designed within IETF SIGTRAN working group for telephone signalling over IP networks (VoIP). Multistreaming to fix up the TCPs Head-ofline blocking Multihoming to handle network failures Association to prevent the DoS attacks

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

SCTP vs TCP vs UDP

Services/Features Connection oriented Full duplex Reliable data transfer SCTP Yes Yes Yes TCP Yes Yes Yes UDP No Yes No

Ordered data delivery

Flow control Congestion control Selective ACKs

Yes
Yes Yes Yes

Yes
Yes Yes optional

No
no no no

Multistreaming
Multihoming Protection against SYN flooding attacks

Yes
Yes Yes

No
No No

No
No NA

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

SCTP Association vs TCP connection

Four-way handshake INIT INIT-ACK Three-way handshake

SYN J

SYN K, ACK J+1

COOKIE_ECHO ACK K+1

COOKIE_ACK

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Multi-streams and multi-homing

Multi-streaming
Application
Application

SCTP Association SCTP

SCTP

IP

IP Network 1

IP

Multiple interface (multi-homing)

IP Network 2

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

SCTP Features
SCTP offers several advantages. (Performance)
Unordered delivery of packets, like UDP Multistreaming:
Avoiding Header Of Line Blocking --- Most important at the application level are SCTPs multistreaming of boundarypreserved messages,

Multihoming: Any SCTP host can establish multiple interfaces, each identified by a separate IP address
Fault tolerance if one of these addresses fails, the destination host can be reached through an alternative interface.

Selective acknowledgements (SACKS)

Security (Security)
Resistance to flooding and masquerade attacks
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Problems with SCTP

The problems
Since each stream has a cost and an overhead to maintain, we must carefully decide the number A current SCTP scheme that uses the same number of streams every time is inappropriate.

No methods to determine the number of streams

If we can determine the optimal number of streams and set the optimal number of stream dynamically, SCTP will be able to get maximum performance without wasting valuable resources

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Modification to SCTP
Factors affecting the SCTPs performance
Receiver buffer size Link error rate Round trip time

Observations
If throughput is constrained by the senders congestion window, it is useless to add additional streams Within congestion window size, more streams are needed if receiver buffer is smaller, as link error rate is higher, and as RTT is shorter.

An optimal number estimation is added before the SCTP association is made.

The estimator can be implemented as fuzzy logic referring system based on the above observations.
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

FL optimal number estimator

Buffer size

RTT

Link error rate

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

NS2 Simulation
SCTP patch for the NS2 has been contributed by a group at the University of Delware[1]. The simulated network
Internet A B C Z AP AP X Y

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Experiment Scenarios
The fuzzy logic based optimal number estimator is used for each scenarios.
Before the SCTP association is made, the estimator determines an optimal number based on the current parameters of underlying networks.

Scenario 1
This scenario run 100 simulations in which the receiver buffer size change from 5KB to 40KB

Scenario 2
This scenario run 100 simulation in which the Round trip time (RTT) ranging from 25ms to 100ms (satellite)

Scenario 3
This scenario run 100 simulation in which the link error rate change from 0.1% (wired networks) to 10%(wireless networks).

Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Goodput vs. Buffer Size

SCTP(stream=1) SCTP(stream=2) 3000 2500 SCTP(stream=3) SCTP(stream=4) FL_SCTP

Different buffer size

Goodput

2000 1500 1000 500 0 5KB 10KB 20KB 40KB Buffer Size(KB)

For different receiver buffer sizes, Modified SCTP with an estimated optimal number always give the best performance.
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Goodput vs. RTT

Different RTT
4100 4000 SCTP(stream=1) SCTP(stream=2) SCTP(stream=3) SCTP(stream=4) FL_SCTP

Goodput (packets)

3900 3800 3700 3600 3500 3400 3300 3200 25ms 50ms RTT(ms) 75ms 100ms

For different round trip times, modified SCTP with an estimated optimal number always generate no worse throughput, but certainly better than TCP (SCTP with one stream)
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Goodput vs. Link Error Rate

Different link error rate
4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 0.10% 1%
Link Error Rate(%) SCTP(stream=1) SCTP(stream=2) SCTP(stream=3) SCTP(stream=4) FL_SCTP

Goodput (packets)

5%

10%

For different link error rates, modified SCTP with an estimated optimal number of streams always perform the best, comparing with the SCTP with a fixed number of streams.
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Related works
WiSE from CERCOM, Italy
This work improves SCTP for wireless networks by inferring whether losses are due to congestions or radio channel errors.[2]

From CUNY Graduate Center, USA.

This works improves SCTP performance by overcoming the small window syndrome resulting from the MAC layer when the SCTP receiver side window is small.[3]

Commercial SCTP products

Cisco implemented SCTP as a part of IP Transfer Point (ITP) product family, and was distributed in the Cisco IOS Software Releases 12.2 Signalware NextGen: This software uses SCTP as the transport protocol to enable voice and data networks to converge, and allows carriers to offer enhancements such as Voice over the Internet and Internet call waiting.
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

Conclusion and future works

Concluding remarks
SCTP can achieve a better performance than TCPReno and TCP-SACK over the wireless networks. SCTP with an estimator of the optimal number of streams always outperforms the SCTP with a fixed number of streams in terms of throughput. Three improvements have been made to the SCTP patch for NS2 simulator

Future directions
In the future, we may use SCTP in Wireless Mobile Wireless Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) Combining our approach with other strategies which tackle the SCTP congestion control to further improve SCTP performance in the wireless environment.
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)

References
1) SCTP pact for NS2, University fo Delaware, http://pel.cis.udel.edu 2) Fracchia et al, A WiSE Extension of SCTP for Wireless Networks, IEEE 2005 Conference on Communication. 3) G. Ye et al, SCTP Congestion Control Performance in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks, IEEE
Z. Zhang and L. Jin: Improving the Performance of SCTP over Wireless Networks (WITSP06)