Re: Maxwell strikes the heart (ECN: Clearing the air)

[J.D. Bakker]

At 14:55 -0800 29-01-2001, Pete Zaitcev wrote:
>So far I fail to see how a repainted NAK, kludged into a NAKless protocol,
>would improve stability of the Internet. If anything, it is going to
>exaggerate traffic oscillations.

If anything RED will *reduce* oscillations by alleviating retransmit 
synchronization.

>  I would appreciate couple of links
>to reputable studies or discussions on the subject.

See

http://www.aciri.org/floyd/ecn.html
http://www.aciri.org/floyd/red.html

(I particularly like ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/talks/vj-nanog-red.pdf)

RED and ECN can be considered independently (although they do work 
together quite well). You can see ECN as a way of the network telling 
the endpoints "Normally I would have dropped this datagram, but I'll 
let you get away with it this time". TCP behavior on reception of an 
ECN should be the same as when a datagram is dropped, but without the 
latency (and jitter) that is the result of a lost datagram.

JDB.
[using RED/ECN-like protocols for latency sensitive video 
communications over a wireless link]
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