"Andrew Jorgensen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> As long as you don't do a significantly worse job than the authors
> of TCP and you're not trying to implement all of the features of TCP
> you will not have "slower downloads" than you would with TCP.

Assuming that you can do as good a job as the authors of TCP is
questionable.  It's a complex protocol, and is that way for a reason.
It has developed to where it is today by responding to real-world
challenges, and it has proved to be effective at meeting them.  Have
you seen the book 'TCP/IP Illustrated'?  Not a small tome.

One of the key features of TCP is congestion control.  As a network
scales, the performance characteristics of a protocol change
significantly from when they operate in a vacuum.  As Hans mentioned
earlier, the early internet was severely hampered by congestion; as a
result, TCP congestion control was introduced and overall throughput
increased dramatically.

Considering that Comcast is doing this stuff as a result of
congestion, and that bandwidth usage is only likely to increase, do
you think moving one of the primary uses of bandwidth to a protocol
that doesn't do congestion control is a good idea?

                --Levi



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