[multipathtcp] MPTCP proxies, and the BANANA BoF

[Brian Trammell <[e-mail]>]

Greetings, all,

First, for those of you who aren't aware, there's a non-WG forming BoF in Seoul on Thursday afternoon, on using multipath bonding for broadband access networks, BANANA. One of the solutions we'll be looking at is MPTCP-proxy based; those interested, please come by!

On this point, Mirja said:

> first, I agree with Alan that such a signal does not need to/should not be part of the MPTCP protocol. MPTCP (as TCP is) is an end2end protocol. If you have one (or two) proxies in the middle, you split up the connection into multiple new ‚end2end‘ connections. If you need additional signaling information on one of the new connections, that a question for a high-layer protocol that uses MPTCP (which is what you do, when you propose it to be part of the payload).

+1. One of the attractive things about MPTCP-based solutions for this particular use case, IMO, is that there's a clear path from a two-proxy situation (which is what BANANA foresees) to a one-proxy situation (MPTCP aware smartphones can use their LTE connection natively, and connect to the far-side bonding proxy directly, if they can be so configured), and eventually to a zero-proxy situation (when content providers also provide multipath services). That pretty much requires that the MPTCP part remain end-to-end, while the proxy selection (and any other interproxy communication) happen out of that band.

Cheers,

Brian