CTCP: Coded TCP using Multiple Paths

Abstract

We introduce CTCP, a novel multi-path transport protocol using network coding. CTCP is designed to incorporate TCP's good features, such as congestion control and reliability, while improving on TCP's performance in lossy and/or dynamic networks. CTCP builds upon the ideas of TCP/NC introduced by Sundararajan et al. and uses network coding to provide robustness against losses. We introduce the use of multiple paths to provide robustness against mobility and network failures. We provide an implementation of CTCP (in userspace) to demonstrate its performance.