Using concurrent multipath transmission for Transport Virtualization: Analyzing path selection

The concept of Transport Virtualization (TV) enhances the capabilities of future networks. TV enables transport mechanisms with arbitrary resource usage independent of the underlying transport system. The simplest form of TV can be achieved by collecting multiple transport resources (even from different virtual networks or providers) and selecting the best resources for exclusive or concurrent use. However, the selection and application of concurrent paths is complex and its impact on the transmission is non-intuitive. Path length diversity of different concurrent paths inevitably introduces out-of-order packet delivery.We present and discuss a mathematical model for the analysis of the fundamental behavior and influence factors for packet re-ordering in concurrent multipath transmissions. Our model facilitates the understanding of path selection algorithms for multipath transport virtualization.