At 09:47 PM 9/7/2002 -0400, Sean Donelan wrote: >Unlike phone calls, TCP traffic doesn't occur in fixed bandwidth >increments. TCP traffic, 90% of Internet traffic, is elastic. By design, >TCP adjusts the traffic rate to keep the bottleneck congested. As the >bottleneck moves, traffic reacts by increasing or decreasing the rate to >match the available capacity. This feedback occurs independently of what >is happening on nearby traffic paths. Even if there is available >capacity on elsewhere, the current Internet design is not very good at >using it. Some people view this as an inefficient use of available >capacity, other people view it as a self-protective mechanism.
Thank Goodness for well-behaved applications, right? ( Misbehaving TCP stacks and UDP-based apps don't obey these back off rules. ) I remember Van Jacobson gave a presentation back in 1997 that spoke about the problems with applications that didn't exhibit these characteristics: http://www.academ.com/nanog/october1997/ It would be interesting to see some recent verification that well-behaved TCP-apps are the norm on the Internet...any data out there in this regard? Bill