In the past, Google has created alternatives to widely used networking protocols such as SPDY in order to deliver search results as fast as possible. Apple is now doing something similar by having Siri use Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP). MPTCP is an extension to the TCP protocol that's used for about 85 percent of all Internet traffic. Generally, it allows TCP to operate over multiple paths at the same time. However, Apple seems to use MPTCP for one very specific purpose: to allow Siri to switch between Wi-Fi and 3G or LTE as quickly and seamlessly as possible.An interesting difference between Google's and Apple's approaches to networking improvements is that Google came up with SPDY first and then went to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to have SPDY adopted as a standard. Apple wasn't involved in the development of MPTCP, but the company simply adopted the IETF specification. Although Apple uses MPTCP for a rather pedestrian purpose, it's not just an optimization to eke out a bit more speed. This is a fundamentally different approach to network communication.Within the large backbone networks that make up the Internet, there are always multiple paths between A and B. Routing protocols make sure packets follow the "best" path. That works well if you have one really good path and one really bad path, but it's less than ideal if you have two paths that are about the same quality. In that case, pushing all packets through one path and leaving the other idle is a waste of resources. This is where MPTCP comes in: it allows the packets that make up a TCP session to flow over multiple paths at the same time.
via WiFiNovation | Scoop.it
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