RFC 6182

"Architectural Guidelines for Multipath TCP Development", March 2011

Canonical URL:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6182.txt
This document is also available in this non-normative format: PDF.

Status:

INFORMATIONAL

Authors:

A. Ford
C. Raiciu
M. Handley
S. Barre
J. Iyengar

Stream:

IETF

Source:

mptcp (tsv)

Please refer here for any errata for this document. To submit a new errata report, go to the main errata page.

Abstract

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 (MPTCP). This document lists certain high-level design decisions that provide foundations for the design of the MPTCP protocol, based upon these architectural requirements. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

For the definition of Stream, see RFC 4844.