Subject: I-D Action:draft-mathis-iccrg-unfriendly-00.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 2 Mar 2009 08:00:02 -0800 (PST)

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.

	Title           : Rethinking TCP Friendly
	Author(s)       : M. Mathis
	Filename        : draft-mathis-iccrg-unfriendly-00.txt
	Pages           : 8
	Date            : 2009-03-02

The current Internet fairness paradigm mandates that all protocols
have equivalent response to packet loss, such that relatively simple
network devices can attain a weak form of fairness by sending uniform
signals to all flows.  This "TCP-friendly" paradigm has been the
policy of the IETF for nearly two decades.  Although it was only an
informal policy in the beginning, it progressively became more formal
following the publication of RFC 2001 in 1997.

However we observe two trends that differ from this policy: an
increasing number of environments where applications and other
circumstances create situations that are "unfair", and ISPs that are
responding to these situation by imposing traffic control in the
network itself.

This note explores the question of whether TCP-friendly paradigm is
still appropriate for the huge breadth of technology and scale
encompassed by today's global Internet.  It considers the merits and
difficulties of changing IETF policy to embrace these changes by
progressively moving the responsibility for capacity allocation from
the end-system to the network.  Ultimately this policy change might
eliminate or redefine the requirement that all protocols be "TCP-
Friendly".

This note is intended foster discussion in the community and
eventually become input to the IESG and IAB, where it might evolve
into a future architecture statement.

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mathis-iccrg-unfriendly-00.txt

Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/

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