Evaluation of multipath communication protocols for reliable internet-based cyber-physical systems

Multipath (MP) communication is widely used to improve the reliability of communication networks in different domains. With this regard, we have also proposed MP communication to improve communication reliability for cyberphysical systems (CPSs) when using the Internet [1]. More specifically, we proposed using different end-to-end (e2e) paths that use different pairs of Internet service providers (ISPs) to achieve MP communication. In this paper, we evaluated MP protocols proposed in the transport layer and above of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. This evaluation is based on a number of requirements drawn from our previous work in order to a achieve highly reliable MP communication. We also considered the technical requirements set by the Internet. Our results indicate that almost all evaluated MP protocols are throughput-oriented and were mostly proposed for local or private networks. We conclude the paper by highlighting a MP protocol candidate that fulfills most of the stated requirements. This candidate will be considered in future work to provide a reliable MP communication solution for Internet-based CPSs.