fgoldstein
join:2003-01-21
Newton Highlands, MA
 ·RCN CABLE
| Re: TCP Koolaid This is interesting stuff, but especially because it took them so long! I do recommend the chuvpilo paper; it is only 8 pages and quite readable.
We were doing this type of work back at DEC in the 1980s. DECnet Phase V, defined by 1986, had explicit congestion notification, which was used to tweak the TCP-equivalent protocol (TP4). I managed to get it added as an option in Frame Relay (the FECN bit), but it saw little use, especially because TCP had no way to use it, since IP didn't pass it through. Now we're finally seeing the IETF crowd running simulations very similar to the ones we ran at DEC about 15 years ago! And waddayaknow, they get similar results.
QuickStart, which Amit Jain and Sally Floyd are now proposing, is very similar to Fast Burst Reservation, which was first proposed in the ATM world in 1990 and then again around 1992. A good idea, if I can say so as the first inventor, but it is a little harder to do in a connectionless network like TCP/IP than in ATM. Again, old DEC ideas pop up long after being pooh-poohed as NIH.
Frankly the whold TCP/IP protocol stack is creaky and in need of replacement or major overhaul, but the inertia against that is huge. |
