Forward Networks’ podcast, “Seeking Truth in Networking” recently interviewed our own Prof. Olivier Bonaventure about his role in the evolution of Multipath TCP from idea to a solution used by millions of people worldwide, most of them without realising it. The result is “MPTCP: The coolest protocol you’re already using – but didn’t know”. Olivier is one of the founders of Tessares and also full professor of Computer Science at UCLouvain in Belgium.

MPTCP evolved from TCP

TCP solves real problems, provides reliability and access to bandwidth, while playing nice with others but TCP was designed for computers with one network interface. Now most of us have devices in our pockets that can connect to multiple networks but usually not at the same time.  Multipath TCP or MPTCP works with multiple connections at the same time increasing bandwidth and reliability. 

Olivier gives the example of Apple using MPTCP initially to ensure the availability of Siri but more recently to improve the user experience of Apple apps like Music and Maps.

MPTCP Use Cases

There are two major types of deployments for MPTCP:

1. Using MPTCP in home Wi-Fi routers to to use xDSL and Cellular at the same time 
2. Putting MPTCP into smartphones to allow them to connect to Wi-Fi, 4G/5G at the same time – 3GPP Rel. 16 specifies MPTCP for ATSSS which enables integration of 5G and Wi-Fi in the core.

Tessares has 6 commercial deployments of the first use case and tested the second use case in a live network with Korea Telecom.

With MPTCP enabled smartphones you can combine Wi-Fi and wireless technologies to boost speed, manage seamless handovers and offload cellular traffic to Wi-Fi. If you are an MNO or MNVO and would like to pilot our overlay solution to combine 4G, 5G and Wi-Fi, please contact us.

Find out why MPTCP is the coolest new protocol you are already using. Listen to the podcast.