Technical Summary
Hosts are often connected by multiple paths, but TCP restricts
communications to a single path per transport connection. Resource usage within
the network would be more efficient were these multiple paths able to be used
concurrently. This should enhance user experience through improved resilience
to network failure and higher throughput.
This document outlines architectural
guidelines for the development of a Multipath Transport Protocol, with
references to how these architectural components come together in the
development of a Multipath TCP protocol. This document lists certain high level
design decisions that provide foundations for the design of the MPTCP protocol,
based upon these architectural requirements.
Working Group Summary
This is a product of the MPTCP WG. There is a consensus in
the WG for publication as an informational RFC.
There is a very solid WG
consensus behind the document. It captures the key high-level design decisions
about the MPTCP protocol, which have been reached after extensive discussion and
agreement at the IETF meetings and on the list.
Document Quality
There is already an implementation of the protocol (draft-ietf-
mptcp-multiaddressed) that implements the architecture and high-level design
decisions in this document, https://scm.info.ucl.ac.be/trac/mptcp/wiki.
There were five detailed reviews of versions of the document. No substantial
issues were raised. Expert reviews (MIB doctor etc) were not applicable.
Personnel
Philip Eardley (philip.eardley@bt.com) is the Document Shepherd.
Lars Eggert (lars.eggert@nokia.com) reviewed the document for the IESG.