A closer look at the adoption of #MPTCP based on ZMaps scans and packet traces arxiv.org/pdf/2205.12138…
ZMap scans over the IPv4 space and IPv6 hitlists reveal that MPTCP is used by IPv4 and IPv6 hosts
More interesting is that MPTCPv1, defined in RFC8664 rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8684.ht… started to be used in October 2021
However, these numbers must be corrected since there are still middleboxes that simply echo the MP_CAPABLE option without supporting MPTCP
Using #tracebox tracebox.org revealed that 16.5k hosts truly support MPTCP on port 80 using IPv4 and 7.5k using IPv6 on port 80
A closer look at the IP addresses that truly support MPTCP show surprising results. Apple leads MPTCPv1, but other ASes also use MPTCPv0 without a clear explanation
However, looking at IP addresses does not tell everything. An anycast address used on Apple servers will serve more traffic than a VPS used by a student…
The packet trace analysis unfortunately cannot reveal lots of information as the MAWI and CAIDA traces are not close to edge servers (notably Apple’s ones) that support #MPTCP
Apple deployment is significant and the move to MPTCPv1 is significant as well
As noted by the authors, the analysis does not capture client-side MPTCP deployments. Those are significant and typically involve a smartphone or an access router using #MPTCP through a proxy managed by the network operators.
Some of these deployments use a variant of the SOCKS protocol such as shadowsocks tessares.net/mptcp-deployme…
Hybrid access networks use #MPTCP between the CPE router (typically a hybrid one with both cellular and xDSL) and a proxy called the Hybrid Access Gateway
These Hybrid Access Gateways serve thousands of households ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/docum…
Several countries have deployed these hybrid access networks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Ac…
Another use case for #MPTCP is the Access Traffic Steering, Switching and Splitting for 5G networks that allows smartphones to efficiently use #WiFi and #5G leveraging #MPTCP and the 0-RTT Convert protocol tessares.net/solutions/5g-a… tessares.net/technology/0-r…
As #MPTCP is now enabled by default on Ubuntu 22.04, Centos 9 and other Linux distributions, we can expect that #MPTCP deployment on servers will increase even if MPTCP must be activated on a per server basis access.redhat.com/documentation/…
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