MPTCP Working Group                                       O. Bonaventure
Internet-Draft                                                 C. Paasch
Intended status: Informational                                 UCLouvain
Expires: January 2, 2015                                   July 01, 2014


                     Experience with Multipath TCP
                 draft-bonaventure-mptcp-experience-00

Abstract

   This document discusses operational experiences of using Multipath
   TCP in real world networks.  It lists several prominent use cases for
   which Multipath TCP has been considered and is being used.  It also
   gives insight in some heuristics and decisions that have helped to
   realize these use cases.  Further, it presents several open issues
   that are yet unclear on how they can be solved.

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 2, 2015.

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   Copyright (c) 2014 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
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   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Middlebox interference  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Congestion control  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   5.  Subflow management  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     5.1.  Implemented subflow managers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     5.2.  Subflow destination port  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
     5.3.  Closing subflows  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   6.  Packet schedulers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   7.  Interactions with the Domain Name System  . . . . . . . . . .  14
   8.  Captive portals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   9.  Conclusion  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   10. Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   11. Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  15
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  19

1.  Introduction

   Multipath TCP was standardized in [RFC6824] and four implementations
   have been developed [I-D.eardley-mptcp-implementations-survey].
   Since the publication of [RFC6824], some experience has been gathered
   by various network researchers and users about the issues that arise
   when Multipath TCP is used in the Internet.

   Most of the experience reported in this document comes from the
   utilization of the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel
   [MultipathTCP-Linux].  It has been downloaded and is used by
   thousands of users all over the world.  Many of these users have
   provided direct or indirect feedback by writing documents (scientific
   articles or blog messages) or posting to the mptcp-dev mailing list (
   https://listes-2.sipr.ucl.ac.be/sympa/arc/mptcp-dev ) . This
   Multipath TCP implementation is actively maintained and continuously
   improved.  It is used on various types of hosts, ranging from
   smartphones or embedded systems to high-end servers.

   This is not, by far, the most widespread deployment of Multipath TCP.
   Since September 2013, Multipath TCP is also supported on smartphones
   and tablets running iOS7 [IOS7].  There are likely hundreds of
   millions of Multipath TCP enabled devices.  However, this particular
   Multipath TCP implementation is currently only used to support a
   single application.  Unfortunately, there is no public information
   about the lessons learned from this large scale deployment.




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   This document is organized as follows.  We explain in Section 2 which
   types of middleboxes the Linux Kernel implementation of Multipath TCP
   supports and how it reacts upon encountering these.  Next, we list
   several use cases of Multipath TCP in Section 3.  Section 4
   summarizes the MPTCP specific congestion controls that have been
   implemented.  Section 5 and 6 discuss heuristics and issues with
   respect to subflow management as well as the scheduling across the
   subflows.  Section 7 presents issues with respect to content delivery
   networks and suggests a solution to this issue.  Finally, Section 8
   shows an issue with captive portals where MPTCP will behave
   suboptimal.

2.  Middlebox interference

   The interference caused by various types of middleboxes has been an
   important concern during the design of the Multipath TCP protocol.
   Three studies on the interactions between Multipath TCP and
   middleboxes are worth being discussed.

   The first analysis was described in [IMC11].  This paper was the main
   motivation for including inside Multipath TCP various techniques to
   cope with middlebox interference.  More specifically, Multipath TCP
   has been designed to cope with middleboxes that : - change source or
   destination addresses - change source or destination port numbers -
   change TCP sequence numbers - split or coalesce segments - remove TCP
   options - modify the payload of TCP segments

   These middlebox interferences have all been included in the MBtest
   suite [MBTest].  This test suite has been used [HotMiddlebox13] to
   verify the reaction of the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux
   kernel when faced with middlebox interference.  The test environment
   used for this evaluation is a dual-homed client connected to a
   single-homed server.  The middlebox behavior can be activated on any
   of the paths.  The main results of this analysis are :

   o  the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel is not
      affected by a middlebox that performs NAT or modifies TCP sequence
      numbers

   o  when a middlebox removes the MP_CAPABLE option from the initial
      SYN segment, the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel
      falls back correctly to regular TCP

   o  when a middlebox removes the DSS option from all data segments,
      the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel falls back
      correctly to regular TCP





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   o  when a middlebox performs segment coalescing, the Multipath TCP
      implementation in the Linux kernel is still able to accurately
      extract the data corresponding to the indicated mapping

   o  when a middlebox performs segment splitting, the Multipath TCP
      implementation in the Linux kernel correctly reassembles the data
      corresponding to the indicated mapping.  [HotMiddlebox13]
      documents a corner case with segment splitting that may lead to
      desynchronisation between the two hosts.

   The interactions between Multipath TCP and real deployed middleboxes
   is also analyzed in [HotMiddlebox13] and a particular scenario with
   the FTP application level gateway running on a NAT is described.

   From an operational viewpoint, knowing that Multipath TCP can cope
   with various types of middlebox interference is important.  However,
   there are situations where the network operators need to gather
   information about where a particular middlebox interference occurs.
   The tracebox software [tracebox] described in [IMC13a] is an
   extension of the popular traceroute software that enables network
   operators to check at which hop a particular field of the TCP header
   (including options) is modified.  It has been used by several network
   operators to debug various middlebox interference problems. tracebox
   includes a scripting language that enables its user to specify
   precisely which packet is sent by the source. tracebox sends packets
   with an increasing TTL/HopLimit and compares the information returned
   in the ICMP messages with the packet that it sends.  This enables
   tracebox to detect any interference caused by middleboxes on a given
   path. tracebox works better when routers implement the ICMP extension
   defined in [RFC1812].

3.  Use cases

   Multipath TCP has been tested in several use cases.  Several of the
   papers published in the scientific litterature have identified
   possible improvements that are worth being discussed here.

   A first, although initially unexpected, documented use case for
   Multipath TCP has been the datacenters [HotNets][SIGCOMM11].  Today's
   datacenters are designed to provide several paths between single-
   homed servers.  The multiplicity of these paths comes from the
   utilization of Equal Cost Multipath (ECMP) and other load balancing
   techniques inside the datacenter.  Most of the deployed load
   balancing techniques in these datacenters rely on hashes computed or
   the five tuple to ensure that all packets from the same TCP
   connection will follow the same path to prevent packet reordering.
   The results presented in [HotNets] demonstrate by simulations that
   Multipath TCP can achieve a better utilization of the available



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   network by using multiple subflows for each Multipath TCP session.
   Although [RFC6182] assumes that at least one of the communicating
   hosts has several IP addresses, [HotNets] demonstrates that there are
   also benefits when both hosts are single-homed.  This idea was
   pursued further in [SIGCOMM11] where the Multipath TCP implementation
   in the Linux kernel was modified to be able to use several subflows
   from the same IP address.  Measurements performed in a public
   datacenter showed performance improvements with Multipath TCP.

   Although ECMP is widely used inside datacenters, this is not the only
   environment where there are different paths between a pair of hosts.
   ECMP and other load balancing techniques such as LAG are widely used
   in today's network and having multiple paths between a pair of
   single-homed hosts is becoming the norm instead of the exception.
   Although these multiple paths have often the same cost (from an IGP
   metrics viewpoint), they do not necessarily have the same
   performance.  For example, [IMC13c] reports the results of a long
   measurement study showing that load balanced Internet paths between
   that same pair of hosts can have huge delay differences.

   A second use case that has been explored by several network
   researchers is the cellular/WiFi offload use case.  Smartphones or
   other mobile devices equipped with two wireless interfaces are a very
   common use case for Multipath TCP.  As of this writing, this is also
   the largest deployment of Multipath-TCP enabled devices [IOS7].
   Unfortunately, as there are no public measurements about this
   deployment, we can only rely on published papers that have mainly
   used the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel for their
   experiment.

   The performance of Multipath TCP in wireless networks was briefly
   evaluated in [NSDI12].  One experiment analyzes the performance of
   Multipath TCP on a client with two wireless interfaces.  This
   evaluation shows that when the receive window is large, Multipath TCP
   can efficiently use the two available links.  However, if the window
   becomes smaller, then packets sent on a slow path can block the
   transmission of packets on a faster path.  In some cases, the
   performance of Multipath TCP over two paths can become lower than the
   performance of regular TCP over the best performing path.  Two
   heuristics, reinjection and penalization, are proposed in [NSDI12] to
   solve this identified performance problem.  These two heuristics have
   since been used in the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux
   kernel.  [CONEXT13] explored the problem in more details and revealed
   some other scenarios where Multipath TCP can have difficulties in
   efficiently pooling the available paths.  Improvements to the
   Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel are proposed in
   [CONEXT13] to cope with some of these problems.




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   The first experimental analysis of Multipath TCP in a public wireless
   environment was presented in [Cellnet12].  These measurements explore
   the ability of Multipath TCP to use two wireless networks (real WiFi
   and 3G networks).  Three modes of operation are compared.  The first
   mode of operation is the simultaneous use of the two wireless
   networks.  In this mode, Multipath TCP pools the available resources
   and uses both wireless interfaces.  This mode provides fast handover
   from WiFi to cellular or the opposite when the user moves.
   Measurements presented in [CACM14] show that the handover from one
   wireless network to another is not an abrupt process.  When a host
   moves, it does not experience either excellent connectivity or no
   connectivity at all.  Instead, there are regions where the quality of
   one of the wireless networks is weaker than the other, but the host
   considers this wireless network to still be up.  When a mobile host
   enters such regions, its ability to send packets over another
   wireless network is important to ensure a smooth handover.  This is
   clearly illustrated from the packet trace discussed in [CACM14].

   Many cellular networks use volume-based pricing and users often
   prefer to use unmetered WiFi networks when available instead of
   metered cellular networks.  [Cellnet12] implements the support for
   the MP_PRIO option to explore two other modes of operation.

   In the backup mode, Multipath TCP opens a TCP subflow over each
   interface, but the cellular interface is configured in backup mode.
   This implies that data only flows over the WiFi interface when both
   interfaces are considered to be active.  If the WiFi interface fails,
   then the traffic switches quickly to the cellular interface, ensuring
   a smooth handover from the user's viewpoint [Cellnet12].  The cost of
   this approach is that the WiFi and cellular interfaces likely remain
   active all the time since all subflows are established over the two
   interfaces.

   The single-path mode is slightly different.  This mode benefits from
   the break-before-make capability of Multipath TCP.  When an MPTCP
   session is established, a subflow is created over the WiFi interface.
   No packet is sent over the cellular interface as long as the WiFi
   interface remains up [Cellnet12].  This implies that the cellular
   interface can remain idle and battery capacity is preserved.  When
   the WiFi interface fails, new subflows are established over the
   cellular interface in order to preserve the established Multipath TCP
   sessions.  Compared to the backup mode described earlier, this mode
   of operation is characterized by a throughput drop while the cellular
   interface is brought up and the subflows are reestablished.  During
   this time, no data packet is transmitted.

   From a protocol viewpoint, [Cellnet12] discusses the problem posed by
   the unreliability of the ADD_ADDR option and proposes a small



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   protocol extension to allow hosts to reliably exchange this option.
   It would be useful to analyze packet traces to understand whether the
   unreliability of the REMOVE_ADDR option poses an operational problem
   in real deployments.

   Another study of the performance of Multipath TCP in wireless
   networks was reported in [IMC13b].  This study uses laptops connected
   to various cellular ISPs and WiFi hotspots.  It compares various file
   transfer scenarios and concludes based on measurements with the
   Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel that "MPTCP provides
   a robust data transport and reduces variations in download
   latencies".

   A different study of the performance of Multipath TCP with two
   wireless networks is presented in [INFOCOM14].  In this study the two
   networks had different qualities : a good network and a lossy
   network.  When using two paths with different packet loss ratios, the
   Multipath TCP congestion control scheme moves traffic away from the
   lossy link that is considered to be congested.  However, [INFOCOM14]
   documents an interesting scenario that is summarised in the figure
   below.

   client ----------- path1 -------- server
     |                                  |
     +--------------- path2 ------------+


                     Figure 1: Simple network topology

   Initially, the two paths have the same quality and Multipath TCP
   distributes the load over both of them.  During the transfer, the
   second path becomes lossy, e.g. because the client moves.  Multipath
   TCP detects the packet losses and they are retransmitted over the
   first path.  This enables the data transfer to continue over the
   first path.  However, the subflow over the second path is still up
   and transmits one packet from time to time.  Although the N packets
   have been acknowledged over the first subflow (at the MPTCP level),
   they have not been acknowledged at the TCP level over the second
   subflow.  To preserve the continuity of the sequence numbers over the
   second subflow, TCP will continue to retransmit these segments until
   either they are acknowledged or the maximum number of retransmissions
   is reached.  This behavior is clearly inefficient and may lead to
   blocking since the second subflow will consume window space to be
   able to retransmit these packets.  [INFOCOM14] proposes a new
   Multipath TCP option to solve this problem.  In practice, a new TCP
   option is probably not required.  When the client detects that the
   data transmitted over the second subflow has been acknowledged over
   the first subflow, it could decide to terminate the second subflow by



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   sending a RST segment.  If the interface associated to this subflow
   is still up, a new subflow could be immediately reestablished.  It
   would then be immediately usable to send new data and would not be
   forced to first retransmit the previously transmitted data.  As of
   this writing, this dynamic management of the subflows is not yet
   implemented in the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel.

   A third use case has been the coupling between software defined
   networking techniques such as Openflow and Multipath TCP.  Openflow
   can be used to configure different paths inside a network.  Using an
   international network, [TNC13] demonstrates that Multipath TCP can
   achieve high throughput in the wide area.  An interesting point to
   note about the measurements reported in [TNC13] is that the
   measurement setup used four paths through the WAN.  Only two of these
   paths were disjoint.  When Multipath TCP was used, the congestion
   control scheme ensured that only two of these paths were actually
   used.

4.  Congestion control

   Congestion control has been an important problem for Multipath TCP.
   The standardised congestion control scheme for Multipath TCP is
   defined in [RFC6356] and [NSDI11].  This congestion control scheme
   has been implemented in the Linux implementation of Multipath TCP.
   Linux uses a modular architecture to support various congestion
   control schemes.  This architecture is applicable for both regular
   TCP and Multipath TCP.  While the coupled congestion control scheme
   defined in [RFC6356] is the default congestion control scheme in the
   Linux implementation, other congestion control schemes have been
   added.  The second congestion control scheme is OLIA [CONEXT12].
   This congestion control scheme is also an adaptation of the NewReno
   single path congestion control scheme to support multiple paths.
   Simulations and measurements have shown that it provides some
   performance benefits compared to the the default congestion control
   scheme [CONEXT12].  Measurement over a wide range of parameters
   reported in [CONEXT13] also indicate some benefits with the OLIA
   congestion control scheme.  Recently, a delay-based congestion
   control scheme has been ported to the Multipath TCP implementation in
   the Linux kernel.  This congestion control scheme has been evaluated
   by using simulations in [ICNP12].  As of this writing, it has not yet
   been evaluated by performing large measurement campaigns.

5.  Subflow management

   The multipath capability of Multipath TCP comes from the utilization
   of one subflow per path.  The Multipath TCP architecture [RFC6182]
   and the protocol specification [RFC6824] define the basic usage of
   the subflows and the protocol mechanisms that are required to create



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   and terminate them.  However, there are no guidelines on how subflows
   are used during the lifetime of a Multipath TCP session.  Most of the
   experiments with Multipath TCP have been performed in controlled
   environments.  Still, based on the experience running them and
   discussions on the mptcp-dev mailing list, interesting lessons have
   been learned about the management of these subflows.

   From a subflow viewpoint, the Multipath TCP protocol is completely
   symmetrical.  Both the clients and the server have the capability to
   create subflows.  However in practice the existing Multipath TCP
   implementations [I-D.eardley-mptcp-implementations-survey] have opted
   for a strategy where only the client creates new subflows.  The main
   motivation for this strategy is that often the client resides behind
   a NAT or a firewall, preventing passive subflow openings on the
   client.  Although there are environments such as datacenters where
   this problem does not occur, as of this writing, no precise
   requirement has emerged for allowing the server to create new
   subflows.

5.1.  Implemented subflow managers

   The Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel includes several
   strategies to manage the subflows that compose a Multipath TCP
   session.  The basic subflow manager is the full-mesh.  As the name
   implies, it creates a full-mesh of subflows between the communicating
   hosts.

   The most frequent use case for this subflow manager is a multihomed
   client connected to a single-homed server.  In this case, one subflow
   is created for each interface on the client.  The current
   implementation of the full-mesh subflow manager is static.  The
   subflows are created immediately after the creation of the initial
   subflow.  If one subflow fails during the lifetime of the Multipath
   TCP session (e.g. due to excessive retransmissions, or the loss of
   the corresponding interface), it is not always reestablished.  There
   is ongoing work to enhance the full-mesh path manager to deal with
   such events.

   When the server is multihomed, using the full-mesh subflow manager
   may lead to a large number of subflows being established.  For
   example, consider a dual-homed client connected to a server with
   three interfaces.  In this case, even if the subflows are only
   created by the client, 6 subflows will be established.  This may be
   excessive in some environments, in particular when the client and/or
   the server have a large number of interfaces.  It should be noted
   that there have been reports on the mptcp-dev mailing indicating that
   users rely on Multipath TCP to aggregate more than four different




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   interfaces.  Thus, there is a need for supporting many interfaces
   efficiently.

   It should be noted that creating subflows between multihomed clients
   and servers may sometimes lead to operational issues as observed by
   discussions on the mptcp-dev mailing list.  In some cases the network
   operators would like to have a better control on how the subflows are
   created by Multipath TCP.  This might require the definition of
   policy rules to control the operation of the subflow manager.  The
   two scenarios below illustrate some of these requirements.

           host1 ----------  switch1 ----- host2
             |                   |            |
             +--------------  switch2 --------+


                Figure 2: Simple switched network topology

   Consider the simple network topology shown in Figure 2.  From an
   operational viewpoint, a network operator could want to create two
   subflows between the communicating hosts.  From a bandwidth
   utilization viewpoint, the most natural paths are host1-switch1-host2
   and host1-switch2-host2.  However, a Multipath TCP implementation
   running on these two hosts may sometimes have difficulties to achieve
   this result.

   To understand the difficulty, let us consider different allocation
   strategies for the IP addresses.  A first strategy is to assign two
   subnets : subnetA (resp. subnetB) contains the IP addresses of
   host1's interface to switch1 (resp. switch2) and host2's interface to
   switch1 (resp. switch2).  In this case, a Multipath TCP subflow
   manager should only create one subflow per subnet.  To enforce the
   utilization of these paths, the network operator would have to
   specify a policy that prefers the subflows in the same subnet over
   subflows between addresses in different subnets.  It should be noted
   that the policy should probably also specify how the subflow manager
   should react when an interface or subflow fails.

   A second strategy is to use a single subnet for all IP addresses.  In
   this case, it becomes more difficult to specify a policy that
   indicates which subflows should be established.

   The second subflow manager that is currently supported by the
   Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel is the ndiffport
   subflow manager.  This manager was initially created to exploit the
   path diversity that exists between single-homed hosts due to the
   utilization of flow-based load balancing techniques.  This subflow
   manager creates N subflows between the same pair of IP addresses.



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   The N subflows are created by the client and differ only in the
   source port selected by the client.

5.2.  Subflow destination port

   The Multipath TCP protocol relies on the token contained in the
   MP_JOIN option to associate a subflow to an existing Multipath TCP
   session.  This implies that there is no restriction on the source
   address, destination address and source or destination ports used for
   the new subflow.  The ability to use different source and destination
   addresses is key to support multihomed servers and clients.  The
   ability to use different destination port numbers is worth being
   discussed because it has operational implications.

   For illustration, consider a dual-homed client that creates a second
   subflow to reach a single-homed server as illustrated in the
   Figure 3.

           client ------- r1 --- internet --- server
               |                   |
               +----------r2-------+


       Figure 3: Multihomed-client connected to single-homed server

   When the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel creates the
   second subflow it uses the same destination port as the initial
   subflow.  This choice is motivated by the fact that the server might
   be protected by a firewall and only accept TCP connections (including
   subflows) on the official port number.  Using the same destination
   port for all subflows is also useful for operators that rely on the
   port numbers to track application usage in their network.

   There have been suggestions from Multipath TCP users to modify the
   implementation to allow the client to use different destination ports
   to reach the server.  This suggestion seems mainly motivated by
   traffic shaping middleboxes that are used in some wireless networks.
   In networks where different shaping rates are associated to different
   destination port numbers, this could allow Multipath TCP to reach a
   higher performance.  As of this writing, we are not aware of any
   implementation of this kind of tweaking.

   However, from an implementation point-of-view supporting different
   destination ports for the same Multipath TCP connection introduces a
   new performance issue.  A legacy implementation of a TCP stack
   creates a listening socket to react upon incoming SYN segments.  The
   listening socket is handling the SYN segments that are sent on a
   specific port number.  Demultiplexing incoming segments can thus be



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   done solely by looking at the IP addresses and the port numbers.
   With Multipath TCP however, incoming SYN segments may have an MP_JOIN
   option with a different destination port.  This means, that all
   incoming segments that did not match on an existing listening-socket
   or an already established socket must be parsed for an eventual
   MP_JOIN option.  This imposes an additional cost on servers,
   previously not existent on legacy TCP implementations.

5.3.  Closing subflows

                    client                       server
                       |                           |
   MPTCP: established  |                           | MPTCP: established
   Sub: established    |                           | Sub: established
                       |                           |
                       |         DATA_FIN          |
   MPTCP: close-wait   | <------------------------ | close()   (step 1)
   Sub: established    |         DATA_ACK          |
                       | ------------------------> | MPTCP: fin-wait-2
                       |                           | Sub: established
                       |                           |
                       |  DATA_FIN + subflow-FIN   |
   close()/shutdown()  | ------------------------> | MPTCP: time-wait
   (step 2)            |        DATA_ACK           | Sub: close-wait
   MPTCP: closed       | <------------------------ |
   Sub: fin-wait-2     |                           |
                       |                           |
                       |        subflow-FIN        |
   MPTCP: closed       | <------------------------ | subflow-close()
   Sub: time-wait      |        subflow-ACK        |
   (step 3)            | ------------------------> | MPTCP: time-wait
                       |                           | Sub: closed
                       |                           |


     Figure 4: Multipath TCP may not be able to avoid time-wait state
                  (even if enforced by the application).

   Figure 4 shows a very particular issue within Multipath TCP.  Many
   high-performance applications try to avoid Time-Wait state by
   deferring the closure of the connection until the peer has sent a
   FIN.  That way, the client on the left of Figure 4 does a passive
   closure of the connection, transitioning from Close-Wait to Last-ACK
   and finally freeing the resources after reception of the ACK of the
   FIN.  An application running on top of a Multipath TCP enabled Linux
   kernel might also use this approach.  The difference here is that the
   close() of the connection (Step 1 in Figure 4) only triggers the
   sending of a DATA_FIN.  Nothing guarantees that the kernel is ready



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   to combine the DATA_FIN with a subflow-FIN.  The reception of the
   DATA_FIN will make the application trigger the closure of the
   connection (step 2), trying to avoid Time-Wait state with this late
   closure.  This time, the kernel might decide to combine the DATA_FIN
   with a subflow-FIN.  This decision will be fatal, as the subflow's
   state machine will not transition from Close-Wait to Last-Ack, but
   rather go through Fin-Wait-2 into Time-Wait state.  The Time-Wait
   state will consume resources on the host for at least 2 MSL (Maximum
   Segment Lifetime).  Thus, a smart application, that tries to avoid
   Time-Wait state by doing late closure of the connection actually ends
   up with one of its subflows in Time-Wait state.  A high-performance
   Multipath TCP kernel implementation should honor the desire of the
   application to do passive closure of the connection and successfully
   avoid Time-Wait state - even on the subflows.

   The solution to this problem lies in an optimistic assumption that a
   host doing active-closure of a Multipath TCP connection by sending a
   DATA_FIN will soon also send a FIN on all its in subflows.  Thus, the
   passive closer of the connection can simply wait for the peer to send
   exactly this FIN - enforcing passive closure even on the subflows.
   Of course, to avoid consuming resources indefinitely, a timer must
   limit the time our implementation waits for the FIN.

6.  Packet schedulers

   In a Multipath TCP implementation, the packet scheduler is the
   algorithm that is executed when transmitting each packet to decide on
   which subflow it needs to be transmitted.  The packet scheduler
   itself does not have any impact on the interoperability of Multipath
   TCP implementations.  However, it may clearly impact the performance
   of Multipath TCP sessions.  It is important to note that the problem
   of scheduling Multipath TCP packets among subflows is different from
   the problem of scheduling SCTP messages.  SCTP implementations also
   include schedulers, but these are used to schedule the different
   streams.  Multipath TCP uses a single data stream.

   Various researchers have explored theoretically and by simulations
   the problem of scheduling packets among Multipath TCP subflows
   [ICC14].  Unfortunately, none of the proposed techniques have been
   implemented and used in real deployment.  A detailed analysis of the
   impact of the packet scheduler will appear in [CSWS14].  This article
   proposes a pluggable architecture for the scheduler used by the
   Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel.  This architecture
   allows researchers to experiment with different types of schedulers.
   Two schedulers are compared in [CSWS14] : round-robin and lowest-rtt-
   first.  The experiments and measurements described in [CSWS14] show
   that the lowest-rtt-first scheduler appears to be the best compromise
   from a performance viewpoint.



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   Another study of the packet schedulers is presented in [PAMS2014].
   This study relies on simulations with the Multipath TCP
   implementation in the Linux kernel.  The simulation scenarios
   discussed in [PAMS2014] confirm the impact of the packet scheduler on
   the performance of Multipath TCP.

7.  Interactions with the Domain Name System

   Multihomed clients such as smartphones could lead to operational
   problems when interacting with the Domain Name System.  When a
   single-homed client performs a DNS query, it receives from its local
   resolver the best answer for its request.  If the client is
   multihomed, the answer returned to the DNS query may vary with the
   interface over which it has been sent.

                      cdn1
                       |
           client -- cellular -- internet -- cdn3
              |                   |
              +----- wifi --------+
                       |
                     cdn2


                     Figure 5: Simple network topology

   If the client sends a DNS query over the WiFi interface, the answer
   will point to the cdn2 server while the same request sent over the
   cellular interface will point to the cdn1 server.  This might cause
   problems for CDN providers that locate their servers inside ISP
   networks and have contracts that specify that the CDN server will
   only be accessed from within this particular ISP.  Assume now that
   both the client and the CDN servers support Multipath TCP.  In this
   case, a Multipath TCP session from cdn1 or cdn2 would potentially use
   both the cellular network and the WiFi network.  This would violate
   the contract between the CDN provider and the network operators.  A
   possible solution to prevent this problem would be to modify the DNS
   resolution on the client.  The client subnet EDNS extension defined
   in [I-D.vandergaast-edns-client-subnet] could be used for this
   purpose.  When the client sends a DNS query from its WiFi interface,
   it should also send the client subnet corresponding to the cellular
   interface in this request.  This would indicate to the resolver that
   the answer should be valid for both the WiFi and the cellular
   interfaces (e.g., the cdn3 server).







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8.  Captive portals

   Multipath TCP enables a host to use different interfaces to reach a
   server.  In theory, this should ensure connectivity when at least one
   of the interfaces is active.  In practice however, there are some
   particular scenarios with captive portals that may cause operational
   problems.  The reference environment is the following :

           client -----  network1
                |
                +------- internet ------------- server


                    Figure 6: Issue with captive portal

   The client is attached to two networks : network1 that provides
   limited connectivity and the entire Internet through the second
   network interface.  In practice, this scenario corresponds to an open
   WiFi network with a captive portal for network1 and a cellular
   service for the second interface.  On many smartphones, the WiFi
   interface is preferred over the cellular interface.  If the
   smartphone learns a default route via both interfaces, it will
   typically prefer to use the WiFi interface to send its DNS request
   and create the first subflow.  This is not optimal with Multipath
   TCP.  A better approach would probably be to try a few attempts on
   the WiFi interface and then try to use the second interface for the
   initial subflow as well.

9.  Conclusion

   In this document, we have documented a few years of experience with
   Multipath TCP.  The information presented in this document was
   gathered from scientific publications and discussions with various
   users of the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel.

10.  Acknowledgements

   This work was partially supported by the FP7-Trilogy2 project.  We
   would like to thank all the implementers and users of the Multipath
   TCP implementation in the Linux kernel.

11.  Informative References

   [CACM14]   Paasch, C. and O. Bonaventure, "Multipath TCP",
              Communications of the ACM, 57(4):51-57 , April 2014,
              <http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/multipath-tcp>.





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   [CONEXT12]
              Khalili, R., Gast, N., Popovic, M., Upadhyay, U., and J.
              Leboudec, "MPTCP is not pareto-optimal performance issues
              and a possible solution", Proceedings of the 8th
              international conference on Emerging networking
              experiments and technologies (CoNEXT12) , 2012.

   [CONEXT13]
              Paasch, C., Khalili, R., and O. Bonaventure, "On the
              Benefits of Applying Experimental Design to Improve
              Multipath TCP", Conference on emerging Networking
              EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT) , December 2013,
              <http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/benefits-applying-
              experimental-design-improve-multipath-tcp>.

   [CSWS14]   Paasch, C., Ferlin, S., Alay, O., and O. Bonaventure,
              "Experimental Evaluation of Multipath TCP Schedulers",
              SIGCOMM CSWS2014 workshop , August 2014.

   [Cellnet12]
              Paasch, C., Detal, G., Duchene, F., Raiciu, C., and O.
              Bonaventure, "Exploring Mobile/WiFi Handover with
              Multipath TCP", ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Cellular Networks
              (Cellnet12) , 2012, <http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/
              publications/exploring-mobilewifi-handover-multipath-tcp>.

   [HotMiddlebox13]
              Hesmans, B., Duchene, F., Paasch, C., Detal, G., and O.
              Bonaventure, "Are TCP Extensions Middlebox-proof?", CoNEXT
              workshop HotMiddlebox , December 2013,
              <http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/
              are-tcp-extensions-middlebox-proof>.

   [HotNets]  Raiciu, C., Pluntke, C., Barre, S., Greenhalgh, A.,
              Wischik, D., and M. Handley, "Data center networking with
              multipath TCP", Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGCOMM
              Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (Hotnets-IX) , 2010,
              <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1868447.1868457>.

   [I-D.eardley-mptcp-implementations-survey]
              Eardley, P., "Survey of MPTCP Implementations", draft-
              eardley-mptcp-implementations-survey-02 (work in
              progress), July 2013.

   [I-D.vandergaast-edns-client-subnet]
              Contavalli, C., Gaast, W., Leach, S., and E. Lewis,
              "Client Subnet in DNS Requests", draft-vandergaast-edns-
              client-subnet-02 (work in progress), July 2013.



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   [ICC14]    Kuhn, N., Lochin, E., Mifdaoui, A., Sarwar, G., Mehani,
              O., and R. Boreli, "DAPS Intelligent Delay-Aware Packet
              Scheduling For Multipath Transport", IEEE ICC 2014 , 2014.

   [ICNP12]   Cao, Y., Xu, M., and X. Fu, "Delay-based congestion
              control for multipath TCP", 20th IEEE International
              Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP) , 2012.

   [IMC11]    Honda, M., Nishida, Y., Raiciu, C., Greenhalgh, A.,
              Handley, M., and H. Tokuda, "Is it still possible to
              extend TCP?", Proceedings of the 2011 ACM SIGCOMM
              conference on Internet measurement conference (IMC '11) ,
              2011, <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2068816.2068834>.

   [IMC13a]   Detal, G., Hesmans, B., Bonaventure, O., Vanaubel, Y., and
              B. Donnet, "Revealing Middlebox Interference with
              Tracebox", Proceedings of the 2013 ACM SIGCOMM conference
              on Internet measurement conference , 2013,
              <http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/
              revealing-middlebox-interference-tracebox>.

   [IMC13b]   Chen, Y., Lim, Y., Gibbens, R., Nahum, E., Khalili, R.,
              and D. Towsley, "A measurement-based study of MultiPath
              TCP performance over wireless network", Proceedings of the
              2013 conference on Internet measurement conference (IMC
              '13) , n.d., <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2504730.2504751>.

   [IMC13c]   Pelsser, C., Cittadini, L., Vissicchio, S., and R. Bush,
              "From Paris to Tokyo on the suitability of ping to measure
              latency", Proceedings of the 2013 conference on Internet
              measurement conference (IMC '13) , 2013,
              <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2504730.2504765>.

   [INFOCOM14]
              Lim, Y., Chen, Y., Nahum, E., Towsley, D., and K. Lee,
              "Cross-Layer Path Management in Multi-path Transport
              Protocol for Mobile Devices", IEEE INFOCOM'14 , 2014.

   [IOS7]     "Multipath TCP Support in iOS 7", January 2014,
              <http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5977>.

   [MBTest]   Hesmans, B., "MBTest", 2013, <https://bitbucket.org/
              bhesmans/mbtest>.

   [MultipathTCP-Linux]
              Paasch, C., Barre, S., and . et al, "Multipath TCP
              implementation in the Linux kernel", n.d.,
              <http://www.multipath-tcp.org>.



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   [NSDI11]   Wischik, D., Raiciu, C., Greenhalgh, A., and M. Handley,
              "Design, implementation and evaluation of congestion
              control for Multipath TCP", In Proceedings of the 8th
              USENIX conference on Networked systems design and
              implementation (NSDI11) , 2011.

   [NSDI12]   Raiciu, C., Paasch, C., Barre, S., Ford, A., Honda, M.,
              Duchene, F., Bonaventure, O., and M. Handley, "How Hard
              Can It Be? Designing and Implementing a Deployable
              Multipath TCP", USENIX Symposium of Networked Systems
              Design and Implementation (NSDI12) , April 2012,
              <http://inl.info.ucl.ac.be/publications/how-hard-can-it-
              be-designing-and-implementing-deployable-multipath-tcp>.

   [PAMS2014]
              Arzani, B., Gurney, A., Cheng, S., Guerin, R., and B. Loo,
              "Impact of Path Selection and Scheduling Policies on MPTCP
              Performance", PAMS2014 , 2014.

   [RFC1812]  Baker, F., "Requirements for IP Version 4 Routers", RFC
              1812, June 1995.

   [RFC6182]  Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., Barre, S., and J.
              Iyengar, "Architectural Guidelines for Multipath TCP
              Development", RFC 6182, March 2011.

   [RFC6356]  Raiciu, C., Handley, M., and D. Wischik, "Coupled
              Congestion Control for Multipath Transport Protocols", RFC
              6356, October 2011.

   [RFC6824]  Ford, A., Raiciu, C., Handley, M., and O. Bonaventure,
              "TCP Extensions for Multipath Operation with Multiple
              Addresses", RFC 6824, January 2013.

   [SIGCOMM11]
              Raiciu, C., Barre, S., Pluntke, C., Greenhalgh, A.,
              Wischik, D., and M. Handley, "Improving datacenter
              performance and robustness with multipath TCP",
              Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2011 conference , n.d.,
              <http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2018436.2018467>.

   [TNC13]    van der Pol, R., Bredel, M., and A. Barczyk, "Experiences
              with MPTCP in an intercontinental multipathed OpenFlow
              network", TNC2013 , 2013.

   [tracebox]
              Detal, G., "tracebox", 2013, <http://www.tracebox.org>.




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Authors' Addresses

   Olivier Bonaventure
   UCLouvain

   Email: Olivier.Bonaventure@uclouvain.be


   Christoph Paasch
   UCLouvain

   Email: Christoph.Paasch@uclouvain.be







































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