[e2e] Open the floodgate

[Mark Allman]

> Now the above is not uncommon in the real world.  Is it "hard" to
> figure out how packets can be transported efficiently under errored
> rather than congested conditions?  We certainly know that several
> hundred $50/hr employess slowed by 30% is a hard problem to their
> employer, because it's very expensive.  But, for some reason, giving
> TCP a fighting chance to distinguish causes of loss has been very
> "uninteresting" for many years

You told this very nice, realistic little story and then took a very odd
turn at the end, it seems to me.  At the end we find out that something
is corrupting 1% of the packets.  And, rather than blaming that thing
and the fact that network troubleshooting is damn hard you turn it
around on TCP's inability to figure out the reason for loss.  That seems
strange.  

I.e., you have a working system and this company is getting $50/hour out
of their people.  And, then some piece of junk equipment at the phone
company goes flakey and suddenly that is the transport protocol /
congestion control scheme's fault?  There are things to bemoan here, but
they are not TCP (and, that does not mean TCP is perfect -- it could
certainly stand some improvement, but come on ...).

Troubleshooting networks is one of the biggest pains we have, IMO.  We
should think about it and figure out how to do better.

allman


--
Mark Allman -- ICIR -- http://www.icir.org/mallman/



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