VoIP protection and performance improvement

A lot of ongoing work is geared towards improving the reliability, performance and QoS characteristics of service provider IP networks. In contrast, we propose novel enterprise-based techniques that exploit the fact that many enterprises are multi/dual-homed. Certain (e.g., VoIP) packets are duplicated and sent over multiple service providers. After traversing the service provider networks, only the first-to-arrive packets are kept and the later-arriving copies are discarded. In so doing, the result is not only better protection against node and link failures, and packet losses and errors, but also better QoS performance under normal (fault-free) operation. The packet-duplication process can be policy-based and take into account costs, bandwidth, and priority issues, permitting the system to behave like a simple "smart router" that automatically and continually makes use of the best (lowest-delay) service provider.