TCP Fast Open
Abstract
Today’s web services are dominated by TCP flows so short
that they terminate a few round trips after handshaking; this handshake is a significant source of latency for such flows. In this paper we describe the design, implementation, and deployment of the TCP Fast Open protocol, a new mechanism that enables data exchange during TCP’s initial handshake.
In doing so, TCP Fast Open decreases application network
latency by one full round-trip time, decreasing the delay experienced by such short TCP transfers. We address the security issues inherent in allowing data exchange during the three-way handshake, which we mitigate using a security token that verifies IP address ownership.
We detail other fall-back defense mechanisms and address
issues we faced with middleboxes, backwards compatibility
for existing network stacks, and incremental deployment.
Based on traffic analysis and network emulation, we
show that TCP Fast Open would decrease HTTP transaction
network latency by 15%and whole-page load time over 10%
on average, and in some cases up to 40%
that they terminate a few round trips after handshaking; this handshake is a significant source of latency for such flows. In this paper we describe the design, implementation, and deployment of the TCP Fast Open protocol, a new mechanism that enables data exchange during TCP’s initial handshake.
In doing so, TCP Fast Open decreases application network
latency by one full round-trip time, decreasing the delay experienced by such short TCP transfers. We address the security issues inherent in allowing data exchange during the three-way handshake, which we mitigate using a security token that verifies IP address ownership.
We detail other fall-back defense mechanisms and address
issues we faced with middleboxes, backwards compatibility
for existing network stacks, and incremental deployment.
Based on traffic analysis and network emulation, we
show that TCP Fast Open would decrease HTTP transaction
network latency by 15%and whole-page load time over 10%
on average, and in some cases up to 40%
Research Areas
