Hi Tom, On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 1:43 PM, Tom Herbert <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 18, 2017 at 1:06 PM, Yoshifumi Nishida > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi Tom, > > > > Only a few companies can control both client and server sides. > > However, ISPs might be able to control the STB at the client side and the > > middleboxes in their networks. > > This may be a relatively easy way to deploy MPTCP technology rather than > > updating clients or servers. > > Yoshi, > > I think you're focusing too much on the benefits of this solution and > not considering the cost. We've seen time and time again that when > middleboxes get involved in transport layer operations they break the > end to end nature of TCP and that leads to problems. Middlebox > involvement in TCP is one of the major source of protocol ossification > on the Internet. MPTCP is just one feature of TCP that we might want > do deploy there are many others. If this solution hampers use and > deployment of those, then I don't believe this is a reasonable > tradeoff regardless of what the benefits are. You might be right that I focus on the benefits too much. But, I personally don't think all middleboxes are bad. I think these ossifications are mainly caused by poorly designed middleboxes. If we can do things correctly, I think a middlebox might be able to intervene only when it can be beneficial otherwise stays away to not harm anything. I guess you don't want to throw away all load balancers, IDSs, firewalls from the Internet because they ossify protocols in some cases. -- Yoshi
