Comment by dist-epoch
15 hours ago
You have a Wifi network interface and a wired Ethernet one, multipath is somehow combining the two together.
15 hours ago
You have a Wifi network interface and a wired Ethernet one, multipath is somehow combining the two together.
In addition to aggregating, it can also be useful in cases where one link is much slower or higher latency. For example, if you're sitting in your driveway trying to get directions in maps while your phone is still on your very weak wifi network, it's a better user experience to have it to attempt the request using both radios concurrently so that it can fallback to cellular without waiting for a timeout/connection error if you're too far for wifi to actually work well.
Do apps actually use this possibility though?
MPTCP is an extension that requires cooperation. So it is only supported if the network stacks of both peers and all middleboxes can support it. The Linux kernel docs describe it as "opt-in", so it is not enabled by default for every socket opened on the system.
Again, the description of this CVE indicates that the vulnerability does not depend on MPTCP. But it is a factor in the proof-of-concept and its likelihood of success.
So if there was any widespread mutual support of MPTCP, it may shrink significantly as network admins deploy mitigations.