I'm not Dan, but this is slightly less mathematical than it sounds. The
main point (if I understand DJB here) is:
Its only an hour late? Another 10 minutes will hurt about "this much".
Its a day late? Another hour will probably also hurt about "this much".
Its a week late? Another (day?) won't hurt more than, oh, "this much".
"this much" being more or less equal ... djb: '...is worth the same as...'
... where the amount of delay is respective to the amount of accumulated
delay.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rogerio Brito" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> BTW, Dan, where could I read more about optimal schedules? I'm
> particularly interested in learning more about the following
> paragraph of yours (I'm not very experienced on Statistics,
> but I'm willing to learn more about it):
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Mathematical amusement: The optimal retry schedule is essentially,
> though not exactly, independent of the actual distribution of message
> delay times. What really matters is how much cost you assign to retries
> and to particular increases in latency. qmail's current quadratic retry
> schedule says that an hour-long delay in a day-old message is worth the
> same as a ten-minute delay in an hour-old message; this doesn't seem so
> unreasonable.
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
