Measuring self-healing delay of Java-implemented multi-homed SCTP association

Multi-homing is a new feature of SCTP not existed in UDP or TCP. It allows multiple IP addresses to be attached to a single connection to improve stability of data transfer. It significantly enhances reliability and redundancy of transport layer in several levels - from multiple physical network interface cards to complete different logical end-to-end paths. Recently, SCTP protocol was officially made available to millions of Oracle's Java JDK developers. This hints a possibility of great increases of Java-based SCTP multi-homed traffic on the future Internet. This research work investigates behaviors, processes, and performance of self-healing ability of Java-based version of multi-homed SCTP association. A simple multi-homed data transfer program written in Java had been developed and a number of LAN-based experiments had been conducted. Experimental results show, firstly, that client-side and server-side faults dissimilarly affect SCTP recovery process and time. Secondly, HEARTBEAT packet exchanges play a major role for SCTP self-healing process. Thirdly, an average recovery time of the client-side disruption is 0.5 seconds and that of the server-side disruption is 45 seconds.