An MPTCP Option for Network-Assisted MPTCP

Because of the lack of Multipath TCP (MPTCP) support at the server side, some service providers now consider a network-assisted model that relies upon the activation of a dedicated function called MPTCP Conversion Point (MCP). Network-Assisted MPTCP deployment models are designed to facilitate the adoption of MPTCP for the establishment of multi-path communications without making any assumption about the support of MPTCP by the communicating peers. MCPs located in the network are responsible for establishing multi-path communications on behalf of endpoints, thereby taking advantage of MPTCP capabilities to achieve different goals that include (but are not limited to) optimization of resource usage (e.g., bandwidth aggregation), of resiliency (e.g., primary/backup communication paths), and traffic offload management. This document specifies an MPTCP option that is used in the context of Network-Assisted MPTCP: MP_CONVERT.