Category: Network Protocols

TCP Fast Open (TFO) is an extension to the traditional TCP protocol that aims to reduce latency during the connection establishment phase, particularly for recurrent connections between clients and servers. Standard TCP, as defined in RFC 793, requires a three-way handshake before any data can be sent: the client initiates the connection with a SYN…

The Secure Real-time Transport Protocol (SRTP) plays a vital role in securing Voice over IP (VoIP) communications by providing confidentiality, integrity, and authentication for media streams. As VoIP continues to displace traditional telephony infrastructure in both enterprise and consumer contexts, securing the media path becomes as critical as securing the signaling. While protocols like SIP…

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the cornerstone of the modern Internet’s addressing infrastructure, translating human-readable domain names into IP addresses that computers can use to locate services. Traditionally, this process has been limited in its scope, offering basic mappings from domain names to A (IPv4) and AAAA (IPv6) records, along with service-specific SRV records…

As network protocols evolve to incorporate encryption and privacy-by-default principles, traditional methods of measuring performance metrics such as latency and round-trip time (RTT) face new challenges. QUIC, the transport protocol standardized in RFC 9000, encapsulates its control information and most of its headers within encrypted payloads, drastically limiting the visibility of packet exchanges to on-path…

As broadband networks have matured, service providers have adopted a range of access technologies to support the delivery of high-speed Internet to residential and business customers. Among the most widely deployed mechanisms for managing subscriber sessions in these environments are PPPoE (Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet) and IPoE (IP over Ethernet). Both are used to deliver…

The GPRS Tunneling Protocol User Plane (GTP-U) is a fundamental component of mobile network architecture, facilitating the transport of user data across the core and access networks. Originally developed for the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) as part of the 2G GSM evolution, GTP-U has remained a critical transport mechanism through 3G (UMTS), 4G (LTE),…

Traffic Engineering (TE) is a vital discipline within IP/MPLS networks that aims to optimize the flow of traffic to meet performance objectives such as minimizing latency, maximizing bandwidth utilization, ensuring service level agreements (SLAs), and avoiding congestion. Two prominent technologies used to achieve TE objectives in MPLS networks are Resource Reservation Protocol with Traffic Engineering…

IEEE 802.11ax, branded commercially as Wi-Fi 6, represents a significant evolution of the IEEE 802.11 family of wireless LAN standards, particularly in the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer. Unlike previous generations that primarily focused on peak data rate enhancements, 802.11ax targets efficiency, high-density environments, and consistent performance across a wide variety of deployment scenarios. The…

Captive portals are commonly encountered in public Wi-Fi environments such as airports, hotels, coffee shops, and conference centers. They are intermediary web pages presented to a user before granting broader Internet access, typically used to enforce user authentication, present terms of service, or collect information for billing or marketing purposes. To improve the user experience…

The evolution of secure transport protocols has been marked by a continuous effort to reduce latency while preserving strong security guarantees. With the advent of QUIC, standardized in RFC 9000, and TLS 1.3, defined in RFC 8446, the Internet ecosystem has witnessed a substantial shift in how cryptographic handshakes are performed. Both protocols are designed…