Patent ID: 8306039

Claim:
A method for transport path selection for multi-homed paths in Stream Control Transmission Protocol, comprising: establishing a Stream Control Transmission Protocol association for two or more functioning paths, wherein the Stream Control Transmission Protocol association is transmitted over an underlying transport protocol; monitoring statistics on the two or more paths; comparing the statistics on the two or more paths; selecting an optimal path of the two or more paths responsive to the statistics; communicating the optimal path to a peer node; starting data transfer on the optimal path; if a primary path becomes the optimal path, reverting data transfer back to the primary path; continually selecting the optimal path in the Stream Control Transmission Protocol association while preventing route flipping in case of transient network conditions by preventing the selecting of the optimal path in the case of the transient network conditions; and transmitting Stream Control Transmission Protocol chunks to the peer node and receiving Stream Control Transmission Protocol chunks from the peer node; wherein the Stream Control Transmission Protocol chunks comprise any of algorithm on/off messages to enable/disable the transport path selection, switching request notification, switch request confirmation, and data messages comprising the statistics.