Forum Discussion
jeff_mccombs_47
Nimbostratus
NimbostratusIs MPTCP supported?
We're looking into a project that would need to support MPTCP. I'm just now starting my initial research into this, so I'm not yet well versed in how it all works. But what I'd like to know is if the F5's can support it or not? Since we terminate all of our traffic on our F5's first, it would seem to me that this is the first place to look.
7 Replies
mikand_61525I have no idea if MPTCP on its own is supported by the F5 (no hits in devcentral nor the supportpages) but if you have a MPTCP device in front of it then the flows are just regular TCP-sessions.
However reading a description of MPTCP:
"
MultiPath TCP (MPTCP) is an effort towards enabling the simultaneous use of several IP-addresses/interfaces by a modification of TCP that presents a regular TCP interface to applications, while in fact spreading data across several subflows. Benefits of this include better resource utilization, better throughput and smoother reaction to failures.
"
it sounds somwhat like regular setup of F5.
When you setup a VSERVER in F5 this VSERVER will DNAT the traffic towards a pool of members. The loadbalancing algorithm can be for example roundrobin.
If you do this for a pool of webservers you can spread the load while each flow will go to a dedicated server. For example if a client requests 9 pictures and you have 3 members in your pool (and use roundrobin as algo) - the result will be that server1 gets request 1,4,7, server2 gets request 2,5,8 and server3 gets request 3,6,9.
hoolioCirrostratus
I don't see anything specific to MPTCP. You could open a case with Support to check if this is on the roadmap.
Aaron
Christopher_BooSorry to bring up an old thread, but Netscaler has it now. Hopefully this means we will see it soon.
- nitass
Employee
it is tracked as ID389414 and under development.
ID389414 - RFE: LTM to support Multipath TCP (draft-ietf-mptcp-multiaddressed-09)
ingardIs it possible to follow the development somehow?
- M_Quevedo
f5 BIG-IP LTM supports MPTCP (Multipath TCP) from version 11.5.0 forward, starting in May 2014. See http://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/products/big-ip_ltm/releasenotes/product/relnote-ltm-11-5-0.htmlrn_new and the LTM documentation for configuration details.
- The_Bhattman
Have a read
http://threatpost.com/multipath-tcp-introduces-security-blind-spot
