Posted: 01st Nov, 2011 By: MarkJ

A three-year and
£7.9 million EU funded project to develop a long-term solution to the growing problem of
Internet traffic congestion,
TRILOGY, has been awarded the
Future Internet Award ('Future Internet Week' in Poznan, Poland) for developing the new
Multi-Path Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP).
The standard TCP protocol, which practically everybody uses without even realising it, was designed for the internet to help get data from one network device to another. It does this by working alongside your
Internet Protocol ( IP ) address (a unique ID that is assigned to your connection every time you go online).
TCP is very limited in its ability to adapt when congestion strikes at choke points on a network. As a result TRILOGY's team of researchers and companies from Belgium, Finland, Germany, Greece, Spain, UK and the US came up with MPTCP, which was
completed in March 2011. MPTCP is a seamless solution and one that might not seem important to your average Joe, but it could have a big impact.
A European Commission Spokesperson explained:
Multi-Path Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) [is] an extension to standard Internet TCP that enables data to be transmitted from one network node to another via multiple network paths at the same time, an algorithm for multipath routing to take advantage of multi-homing at endpoints and “congestion exposure” extensions to the Internet Protocol (IP) to monitor Internet congestion. In combination, they will enable a more resilient, more flexible and more cost effective Internet.
MPTCP is already finding its way into the ICT industry and is being integrated into open source and other commercially available operating systems. For example, the latest Android and Nokia based phone devices should already have support for it.
It should be stressed that MPTCP alone is not a solution to internet congestion; it's just one part of a far larger puzzle that extends from major undersea fibre optic cables and right into your home.