[e2e] TCP Loss Differentiation

[Detlef Bosau]

Lars Eggert wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2009-2-21, at 3:46, David P. Reed wrote:
>> I think we have no serious debate on any of these things.  I know
>> Cisco's products support ECN, it's really an endpoint stack problem, and
>> the word "lead" was meant to suggest use of Cisco's bully pulpit (white
>> papers, etc.).
>
> FYI - and this may be clear to you but maybe not to everyone - it's 
> not so much an endpoint problem in the sense that ECN wasn't 
> implemented, it's an endpoint problem in the sense that turning it on 
> makes broken middleboxes misbehave,

Thank you for this strong argument in favour of the end to end principle.

It's always a good idea to assume nothing about middleboxes, it's a 
better idea to assume less.

> o a degree where Microsoft for example has decided to leave it off in 
> Vista. See Dave Thaler's slides from a recent IETF meeting:
>
> http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/07mar/slides/tsvarea-3/sld6.htm (and 
> the one following)
>

I'm surprised that Microsoft is involved in the development of 
middleboxes..... ;-)

Don't they provide these funny graphical programs for home computers? *SCNR*

> So we're realistically looking at a deployment delay of max(OS upgrade 
> cycle, NAT upgrade cycle).
I was already surprised to find the term "NAT" mentioned here in the group.

I don't know the attitude of the community. But as far as the colleagues 
are concerned I know of, NAT is considered to be simply an absolute NoNo.
To the best of my knowledge, its a strong consensus to overcome NAT as 
soon as possible.

(However, there's some romour, that some folks want it for IPv6. But we 
all know Einsteins famous quote about the infinity of the universe ;-))

I'm not quite sure whether we should pursue keepalives for things we 
want to get rid of.

In this sense, I'm a strong advocate of the end to end principle. There 
may be of course valid reasons for adding functions to middleboxes. But 
we never should assume more about a middlebox' behaviour than it is 
absolutely necessary.

And this is not only a philsophical view.

The less functions a unit has, the less functions can be out of order. 
It's simply a matter of robustness to keep things small and simple.

And it would be near to commit suicide for the Internet, if we would try 
to follow the version numbers and flavours of MS windows.





-- 
Detlef Bosau                          Mail:  detlef.bosau at web.de
Galileistrasse 30                     Web:   http://www.detlef-bosau.de
70565 Stuttgart                       Skype: detlef.bosau
Mobile: +49 172 681 9937

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 3351 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
Url : http://mailman.postel.org/pipermail/end2end-interest/attachments/20090223/e40bcd98/smime.bin