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Communications Network Networking Wireless Networking

In Korea, Smartphones Use Multipath TCP To Reach 1 Gbps 50

An anonymous reader writes: Korean users are among the most bandwidth-hungry smartphone users. During the MPTCP WG meeting at IETF'93, SungHoon Seo announced that KT had deployed since mid June a commercial service that allows smartphone users to reach 1 Gbps. This is not yet 5G, but the first large scale commercial deployment of Multipath TCP by a mobile operator to combine fast LTE and fast WiFi to reach up to 1 Gbps. This service is offered on the Samsung Galaxy S6 whose Linux kernel includes the open-source Multipath TCP implementation and SOCKSv5 proxies managed by the network operator. Several thousands of users are already actively using this optional service.
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In Korea, Smartphones Use Multipath TCP To Reach 1 Gbps

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  • by Etcetera ( 14711 ) on Friday July 31, 2015 @10:55PM (#50228013) Homepage

    In Korea, single-path TCP is only for old people.

    Got it.

    • Single paths was old new a long time ago - but try to explain it to management, heh! We built some systems for government (don't say which) that used all the possible connections to share the load - not really difficult and really adds to security and recovery too. Anyhow - great idea, heh!

  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Wow, that Kim Jong Un... is there nothing he can't achieve!

  • by Anonymous Coward

    As a Canadian, I have use for this because we're the 3rd world of communications. Voice plus 1GB of data is like $80/month (bell, rogers, etc -- no wind mobile coverage here)... Even the US has far better prices!

    • As a Canadian, I agree. Cellphone companies here are playing a strange game. As a potential customer, the only winning move is not to pay.

      Anyone want to play a nice game of chess?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Some movie quotes become less awesome when posted on Slashdot. That being one such example.

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        As a Canadian, I agree. Cellphone companies here are playing a strange game. As a potential customer, the only winning move is not to pay.

        Anyone want to play a nice game of chess?

        People wonder why I keep my plan, but it's because years ago (around a decade), Fido (back when they were independent) had two data plans - 100MB or unlimited.

        So yeah, I've been grandfathered into an unlimited plan. And ot be honest, they're going to have a hard time getting me off of it. I mean, getting a contract is silly for me

        • Yeah, I got lucky as well, as Rogers started having an annual 'sale' around when the new iPhone was released to get 6 Gb of data $30/month. Then, later, when Telus and Bell got together to build their GSM network, Bell also did it, and I jumped on that. Now, they've stopped doing it and for 6Gb of data, it's still around $60/month if you sign up now.

          To much for "competition".

  • It Multipath TCP ever comes to the U.S., I'm sure AT&T will call it 5G.
  • 1 Gbps (Score:5, Funny)

    by rudy_wayne ( 414635 ) on Friday July 31, 2015 @11:21PM (#50228059)

    So you can exceed your monthly bandwidth quota in an hour or less and be charged for overage in record time.

    • by mlts ( 1038732 )

      With multipath TCP, I can hit my quota on the DSL link, the DOCSIS based link, and the cellular link, all simultaneously.

      I'll sign up for that newsletter.

    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      You are probably not serious anyway, but I'm going to give you a serious comment anyway.

      Quota's are measured in bytes received/sent.

      Bandwidth just means how fast you are sending/receiving.

      If you are trying to download something large, do you want to download it fast and run out of quota fast. Or do you want to wait a long time before receiving all of it and then run out of quota ?

      I know what I would choose: a country where you don't have quota on wired at least.

  • While not entirely the same, the Galaxy S5 here in the states has something similar. It only works with a handful of services like the Google Play store, but it can also download items from both radios at the same time to increase bandwidth.

  • by Mirar ( 264502 )

    While multipath is very cool and all, and it's a sign that maybe the phone doesn't have to change IP as soon as it leaves a WIFI network,

    getting 1Gbps over WIFI might not be _that_ cool? Doesn't 802.11ac already support this over single path?

    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      Actually MPTCP allows you to keep changing your IP-address, you just add new IP-addresses to existing connection when you roam from one WiFi network to the next.

      • by Mirar ( 264502 )

        That sounds like something everything on my Android device needs to use. How do I make this happen?

  • Anyone know what the difference is? They both sound like link bonding to me.
    • by Lennie ( 16154 )

      Boding works at a lower layer. Bonding assumes you are talking to the same network gateway/service provider (you use just one IP).

      MPTCP clearly does not. It let's, for example, a TCP-client talk to a TCP-server over any path the client or server has available to them. This means you can combine different connections/paths from different service providers.

      • by swb ( 14022 )

        It sounds, though, like it requires the client to use an upstream proxy to make it work, otherwise the endpoints would need to be enabled for this, too.

        Even in the SMB world, it's becoming common for clients to want multiple ISP connections. Usually this gets implemented within the firewall or with a link balancer device that allows for various failover or balancing schemes. Any one client TCP session stays on one link, though, so two 10Mbps links never delivers 20 Mbps to any one TCP session.

        I'm not sure

        • by Lennie ( 16154 )

          Yes, the good thing about MPTCP is it works automatically when operating systems adopt it and add it to client OS and server OS.

          They are using a proxy in the case of these smartphones because very little servers on the Internet support it right now.

          It's offered as a premium service to their customers, so maybe these 5500 or so active customers have special need apps.

          Operating system adoption:
          iOS has support for MPTCP but it's only enabled for Siri, for testing their implementation of MPTCP I guess.

          Solaris a

  • Now I'll be able to reach my monthly bandwidth cap in minutes, not hours.

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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