Subject: Re: [tcpm] TCP tuning

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 08:51:23 -0800

Mark Allman wrote:
>> Making TCP smarter is fine; doing so at the expense of robustness is
>> not. 
> 
> I'll agree with this and push back at the same time.  I agree that
> robustness is important and should be protected.  However, I have
> increasingly come to view things like initial RTOs and initial cwnds,
> and etc. as not buying us much robustness.  What buys us robustness is
> the reaction---any reaction---to indications there might be problems.
> These gross notions are more important than any small parameter change
> it seems to me.

I agree that changes to initial parameters are much less important than
the convergence/reaction mechanism that governs them afterwards - today.
That's because of the paradox that most of the connections are short,
but most of the bytes belong to long connections.

We do need to be careful that whatever we do doesn't overwhelm these
assumptions and change the game, however.

Regarding init cwnds, I'd like to see a reasonable level of analysis of
the impact. It's not enough to drive discussions with "we have to RIGHT
NOW!" to satisfy a (often underinformed) perception of need.

Joe

---

From: Mike Belshe <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:21:06 -0800

> NOW!" to satisfy a (often underinformed) perception of need.

Has anyone, on this list or otherwise, suggested that we should change these
items "RIGHT NOW" or without a "reasonable level of analysis"?

I think we'd all be better served to stipulate that everyone on this list
wants to help make smart improvements and stop implying otherwise.

Mike

> Joe
>
>
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>
>

---

From: Joe Touch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:30:21 -0800

Mike Belshe wrote:
...
> Has anyone, on this list or otherwise, suggested that we should change
> these items "RIGHT NOW" or without a "reasonable level of analysis"?

Yes. I'm referring specifically to the recent discussions on this list,
which suggested that either this was urgent (the "right now" part) or
that this didn't need analysis ("it's out in the wild")

Joe