TCP Connection Passing

tcpcp is an experimental mechanism that allows cooperating applications to pass ownership of TCP connection endpoints from one Linux host to another one. tcpcp can be used between hosts using different architectures and does not need the other endpoint of the connection to cooperate (or even to know what's going on).

Such functionality should be useful in load-balancing and failover applications. tcpcp does not migrate entire applications, but it can be used as a building block in systems that implement application migration, such as openMosix. tcpcp is currently a proof of concept implementation. The paper explores two aspects of tcpcp, which should be independently of interest: (1) the actual implementation, and (2) how this fits with TCP semantics.

http://tcpcp.sourceforge.net/