Multipath TCP for FreeBSD
Channel: Andrea Ross
Date: 2013-06-03

An overview of the protocol, stack architecture & performance analysis


Come with me on a journey to learn about the Multipath TCP (MPTCP) protocol and the first publicly released FreeBSD implementation. This talk will examine MPTCP's 'wire' characteristics, the architecture of the modified FreeBSD TCP stack, observations from the development process and results of both performance analysis and empirical research conducted using the stack.

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) transparently retrofits multi-pathing capabilities to regular TCP and is a work in progress Internet Draft being developed within the IETF. The Cisco University Research Program funded the Centre for Advanced Internet Architectures to develop an interoperable implementation of MPTCP for FreeBSD as part of a research project to study mixing loss-based and delay-based congestion control in a multipath context.

As a researcher on the funded project and lead author of the FreeBSD MPTCP implementation, I've data and insights to share with you about the process of going from stock FreeBSD and an IETF Draft to an interoperable MPTCP implementation that is being used in ongoing research programmes.