Multi-Homing

Call control applications for carrier-grade service require highly reliable communication with no single point of failure. SCTP can assist carriers with its multi-homing capabilities. By providing different paths through the network over separate and diverse means, the goal of no single point of failure is more easily attained.

SCTP built-in support for multi-homed hosts allows a single SCTP association to run across multiple links or paths, hence achieving link/path redundancy. With this capability, and SCTP association can be made to achieve fast failover from one link/path to another with little interruption to the data transfer service.

Multi-homing enables an SCTP host to establish an association with another SCTP host over multiple interfaces identified by different IP addresses. With specific regard to the Oracle® Enterprise Session Border Controller these IP addresses need not be assigned to the same phy-interface, or to the same physical Network Interface Unit.

If the SCTP nodes and the according IP network are configured in such a way that traffic from one node to another travels on physically different paths if different destination IP address are used, associations become tolerant against physical network failures and other problems of that kind.

An endpoint can choose an optimal or suitable path towards a multi-homed destination. This capability increases fault tolerance. When one of the paths fails, SCTP can still choose another path to replace the previous one. Data is always sent over the primary path if it is available. If the primary path becomes unreachable, data is migrated to a different, affiliated address — thus providing a level of fault tolerance. Network failures that render one interface of a server unavailable do not necessarily result in service loss. In order to achieve real fault resilient communication between two SCTP endpoints, the maximization of the diversity of the round-trip data paths between the two endpoints is encouraged.