[mlyle]

> - If you didn't solve it, then support for persistent connections in TCP is useless.

SCTP and multipath TCP (which is what we're talking about) already do pretty much this. Assuming that endpoints to a stream connection have single, unchanging network addresses isn't a reasonable assumption anymore. But we're stuck with the assumption that hosts won't move in one of our most common protocols.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multipath_TCP#/media/File:Diff...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stream_Control_Transmission_Pr...

In the OSI model, you got similar functionality up at layer 5, but TCP only handles the connection/disconnection aspect of the session layer. In the internet world, we have a bunch of haphazard sets of retries, session balancing, multihoming and reconnecting behavior that are protocol specific (and completely missing from many well-used protocols) kludged on top. (Actually arguably MP-TCP is a session layer on top of TCP).

The only way you solve this on layer 3 is to build some kind of messy overlay network, because addresses have no real relation to where things are anymore. And we know that overlay networks are suboptimal and inefficient. Solving it at layer 4 doesn't have to be (but it's too late for that now).