Recently, adding multipath capability in the Internet protocol suite has attracted increasing interest. By letting end hosts discover several paths to communicate, end-to-end multipath protocols aim to improve utilization rate of Internet resources. Although many proposals for end-to-end multipath communication exist, they have not reached significant deployment. Since the multipath protocols are mainly designed for open multi-stakeholder environments, understanding their economic impact is important. This paper introduces a model for assessing the value of the end-to-end multipath protocols from the end user perspective. Without a net benefit of the end user, the end-to-end multipath communication only results in the reallocation of costs and benefits in the Internet connectivity market. The model indicates that wireless devices having access to multiple independent access operators via similar or dissimilar access technologies are crucial in achieving end user value out of multipath communication. Initially, the end user value seems higher when the radio interfaces to access operators are active one at a time but later on, along with higher-energy batteries and lower-energy protocols, full benefit of multipath communication can be achieved. The value of multipath protocols depends on the effective path diversity and available capacity on the Internet.

multipath communication, path diversity, net benefit, end user