IoT Networking Using MPTCP Protocol

Abstract: The progress of technology is moving in a rapid pace forward, with new solutions and improvements being developed each year. Internet of Things (IoT) is one area of computer science that seen a growing interest from the population leading to more deployments of the technology. IoT devices often operate in low-power lossy networks making them depend upon low energy consumption but also high reliability. As the devices become more mobile this also exposes several challenges, one being connectivity in regard to mobility. Our proposed solution to this problem use Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) as a way of delivering high level of performance and connectivity and thereby high reliability. There has been research and implementations of MPTCP in different networks, however in low power radio networks, such as the ones IoT devices resides in, it is still a novel idea.  We reproduced and tested an implementation of MPTCP, against a similar network that is using regular TCP and compared the results. The MPTCP network showed a higher throughput and data transfer, proving to be more efficient while also providing a higher level of reliability in regard to connectivity. However, MPTCP showed a higher rate of packet retransmission compared to regular TCP. To be able to fully deploy MPTCP in low energy IoT devices there needs to be more improvements to accommodate the needs that such networks depend upon. There are use cases, such as for mobile cellular devices where MPTCP would make an impactful difference.