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It's less about routing and more about connections. Typically, your client makes a single TCP connection for HTTP communication, all data requested on that connection is communicated on that connection. With a supporting server, multiple TCP connections can be used for the same HTTP connection. This doesn't help with transfer speed, but it improves TCP's ability to route around failure. One of your multiple TCP connections goes out, and another one (presumably on a different route) continues handling data transfer. With regular old TCP, the connection tends to fail and has to be re-established.

Pointless Pontification: since TCP was designed to route around failure, multi-connection TCP sounds to me like an adaptation of technology to the "demands of business." What I mean is network operators seem to want to centralize their networks to reduce costs instead of distributing them to make them robust, thus the technologists are attempting to work around this "failure."



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