[e2e] Skype and congestion collapse.

[David P. Reed]

I was going to give a technical response, but it might be better to 
think whether the question is at all meaningful.

Why would Skype be worse than RealVideo, which continuously sends at 
hundreds of kb/sec, or internet radio, which does no silence 
suppression, and listeners listen to continuously longer than I 
typically converse on the phone?   These are in heavy use today.

Or bittorrent, which when I use it generates bits at me at about 500 KB/sec?

What about H.323 video conferencing, also very common in networks that 
have moderate capacity?

Congestion collapse is a well-defined term.   It's not the plural of 
"heavy user".   And people pay 10's of dollars per month to their 
provider to build out access infrastructure that is today orders of 
magnitude more capacious than the trivial load of 10 KB/sec only when 
the user is actually making a phone call.

Getting real, it's important to realize that "silence suppression" is 
not what prevents congestion in the phone network.   If so, we could 
bring the phone network down by placing calls and "all together now" 
shouting "Now" at precisely midnight on March 15th.

Of course, Chicken Little got lots of attention by worrying people that 
the sky is falling, the sky is falling.... maybe the magic words 
"congestion collapse" can create a magical fantasy world for those who 
find horror movies believable, that firewalls make a system secure, or 
who think the TSA's function is to stop terrorists rather than to make 
the public feel protected.