A Look at Mutlipath TCP

Multipath Router is an example of a device in development that uses the mutlipath TCP.

Multipath TCP is is an effort towards enabling the simultaneous use of several IP-addresses/interfaces by a modification of the TCP protocol that presents a regular TCP interface to applications, while in fact spreading data across several subflows. Benefits of this include better resource utilization, better throughput and smoother reaction to failures. This means, for example, that your mobile device which up to now would utilize each of its connection methods (3g, 4g, Wi Fi) in isolation could potentially use each connection simultaneously making full use of multipath TCP’s intelligent load balancing algorithms to ensure the most stable and efficient connection.

This has big implications for the retail broadband/mobile market as now devices could be developed that manage to link all of the currently isolated methods of internet access and give customers a vastly more reliable, faster and efficient internet connection than current TCP methods.It was developed by Sébastien Barré in 2009 and has now seen adoption by major companies such as Apple in small but interesting ways.

What could this mean for Africa?:

If/When multipath TCP becomes standard this could have a big impact on the African ICT market. As multipath TCP is backwards compatible with the TCP/IP protocol, it will give even current mobile devices the ability to intelligently manage connections to provide a stable internet connection. In many scenario’s in Africa, a mobile device will be the only method of internet access. This fact coupled with realities such as load shedding and power outages still largely prevalent across many parts of Africa, previously meant that if your wi-fi connection went down your mobile device would only have 3g or (if implemented) 4g access both protocols which are not optimized for all forms of interactivity on the internet, especially in the local African context. Never mind the data charges from the carriers.

With multipath TCP, a device can seamlessly switch from it’s wi-fi to any of the other connections it has available. It is even possible to link the connections of two SEPARATE devices together making for an even more robust connection. We foresee that this protocol will have many positive outcomes for Africa once it becomes mainstream.

For more info see: http://multipath-tcp.org/ and http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6824