Subject: [multipathtcp] A Next Generation Transport Services Architecture

From: Janardhan Iyengar <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:44:42 -0400

(Apologies for cross-posting)

Dear all,

We have uploaded a draft describing our proposed transport re-architecture, with its relevance and implications to multipath transport.  Our hope is that this draft starts (or continues?) a conversation on a refactoring of the transport layer to accomodate new services and network elements.

We also hope that this draft serves as a starting point for discussions about multipath transport and for an architectural framework within which to place multipath-tcp work at the IETF.

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   A Next Generation Transport Services Architecture
   http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iyengar-ford-tng-00.txt

   Abstract:

   While there is substantial community interest in next-generation
   multipath-capable Internet transports, evolutionary pressures have
   gradually eroded the simplicity of the Internet's original transport
   architecture to a point where it is no longer realistically
   applicable to new tranports.  This document proposes a new
   architectural framework for next-generation multipath-capable
   transport protocols, focusing immediately on multipath TCP but taking
   care to allow for generalization to other multipath-capable
   transports.  The architecture places emphasis on enabling new
   multipath features in a safe, TCP-friendly, and backward-compatible
   fashion, retaining full interoperability with both existing
   applications and existing network infrastructure, and enabling reuse
   of existing protocols as much as possible while providing incremental
   deployment paths to new, more powerful and/or more efficient
   protocols.  The architecture re-establishes the long-lost principles
   of end-to-end reliability and fate sharing, in the presence of
   existing and future network middleboxes, and enables the deployment
   of transport-neutral end-to-end protection without interfering with
   these policy-enforcing or performance-enhancing middleboxes.  This
   document describes architecture goals, a layering model supporting
   these goals, abstract properties of the interfaces between the
   architecture's new layers, general approaches to multipath congestion
   control and how they fit into the architecture, realistic protocol
   design and incremental deployment paths, and ways in which this
   document complements and relates to ongoing protocol design
   activities in the IETF.
   ------------

Comments and thoughts welcome!
- jana

-- 
Janardhan Iyengar
Assistant Professor, Computer Science
Franklin & Marshall College
http://www.fandm.edu/jiyengar