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A Little-Heralded New iOS 7 Feature: Multipath TCP

Posted by timothy on from the this-way-and-that dept.

Olivier Bonaventure writes "Besides changes in UI, multitasking and other features that the press discusses, iOS7 also includes support for Multipath TCP. Multipath TCP is a major extension to TCP that is able to use different interfaces for the same connection. Until now, Multipath TCP has been mainly used by researchers with a modified Linux kernel. iOS7 changes that, with millions of Multipath-TCP enabled devices that can switch from 3G to WiFi without losing existing TCP connections. This is not yet the case on iOS7, which currently seems to only enable it for SIRI, but other use cases will likely appear in the future."

4 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Re:closed source triumphs again by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Informative

    Missed the whole, "Until now, Multipath TCP has been mainly used by researchers with a modified Linux kernel," part did ya?

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  2. You're Not Making Sense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The headline says IOS7 has it, but the synopsis says that it doesn't yet.

    The reality is that for Multipath TCP to work, both ends of the connect must be Multipath TCP capable. That is NOT the case in 99.999% of connections.

    It seems that Apple has made Siri multipath TCP capable, ergo... What all this means to you or me is, not much, but hopefully a more reliable Siri connection and response. That means she might ask you if you want her to search the web for you more quickly than in the past.

  3. Re:IPv6 by shreak · · Score: 5, Informative

    Multipath TCP is implemented through TCP options so everything happens above the base IP (v4 or v6) layer. There's not specific advantage with IPv6. It can even happen transparently with one link over IPv4 (say wifi) and another link going over IPv6 (like your mobile bearer).

  4. Re:Maybe ... by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Informative

    It does officially support HTTP1.1, but most servers detect Safari and use HTTP1.0 instead.

    I haven't hit this problem myself on any of our large websites, but googling yields this, which seems to indicate that the problem may be on caching proxies. I haven't seen it with Linux Virtual Server (using Direct Routing), Apache, Squid, or Apache Traffic Server (with pipelining support enabled).

    --
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