January 13, 2015

Useful Multipath TCP software

Since the first release of the Multipath TCP implementation in the Linux kernel, various software packages have been written by project students and project contributors. Some of this software is available from the official Multipath TCP github repository. The core packages are :

In addition to these packages, the repository contains several ports for specific platforms including the Raspberry PI and several smartphones. However, most of these ports were based on an old version of the Multipath TCP kernel and have not been maintained.

Extensions to tcpdump and wireshark were initially posted as patches. The basic support for Multipath TCP is now included in these two important packages. Extensions are still being developed, e.g. https://github.com/teto/wireshark

Besides these core packages, several other open-source packages can be very useful for Multipath TCP users and developers :

  • tracebox is a flexible traceroute-like package that allows to detect middlebox interference inside a network. It can be used to verify whether packets containing any of the MPTCP options pass through firewalls. The source code for tracebox is available from https://github.com/tracebox/tracebox
  • mptcp-scapy is an extension to the popular scapy packet manipulation software that supports Multipath TCP. It was recently updated and can be obtained from https://github.com/Neohapsis/mptcp-abuse
  • MPTCPtrace is the equivalent for Multipath TCP of the popular tcptrace packages. It parses libpcap files and extracts both statistics and plots from the packet capture. This is one of the best way to analyse the dynamics of Multipath TCP in a real network.
  • MBClick is a set of Click elements that reproduce the behaviour of various types of middleboxes. It proved to be very useful while developing the middlebox support in Multipath TCP.
  • packetdrill is a software that allows to test precisely the behaviour of a TCP implementation. It has been extended to support Multipath TCP and a set of tests has been developed : https://github.com/ArnaudSchils/packetdrill_mptcp
  • MPTCP vagrant is a set of scripts that can be used to automate the creation of Multipath TCP capable virtualbox images.
Posted by Olivier Bonaventure