> From: Gregory Maxwell ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > Date: Sun Jan 28 2001 - 14:42:04 EST > > On Sun, Jan 28, 2001 at 01:29:52PM +0000, James Sutherland wrote: > > > There is nothing silly with the decision, davem is simply a modern day > > > internet hero. > > > > No. If it were something essential, perhaps, but it's just a minor > > performance tweak to cut packet loss over congested links. It's not > > IPv6. It's not PMTU. It's not even very useful right now! > > No. ECN is essential to the continued stability of the Internet. Without > probabilistic queuing (i.e. RED) and ECN the Internet will continue to have > retransmit synchronization and once congested stay congested until people get > frustrated and give it up for a little bit. > > It's a real issue, and it's actually important to have it implemented. It's > not just a performance hack. I always "knew" that the stability of the Internet is secured by the exponential backoff in TCP. A small packet loss on uncongested links is a part of this technique, and it existed long before ATM studies produced RED (which infiltrated backwards). It also requires sending stacks to "give up for a little bit" (actually to give up a lot, and together with the slow start it produced the well known "saw" of the window size). So far I fail to see how a repainted NAK, kludged into a NAKless protocol, would improve stability of the Internet. If anything, it is going to exaggerate traffic oscillations. I would appreciate couple of links to reputable studies or discussions on the subject. -- Pete - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
