On Fri, Feb 7, 2025, at 13:53, Neal Cardwell wrote: > [...] (X less than, say, 10ms), then it may be worth the user's > 5G cell phone modem buffering received packets for X milliseconds to > try to deliver in-order data to the receiver if this can be done in a > low-latency manner.
These decisions have knock-on effects (what if every hop in the chain were to do the same?), but that does sound reasonable on the surface of it. That is, there might be some value where spending that time on restoring order is more productive than exposing the receiver to the out of order stuff. It's possible that retransmissions on a short hop of a link fit that. It's possible that reordering at that layer is - in the aggregate - more efficient, though I'm less convinced of that. However, I would suggest that this is only true if the 10ms would otherwise be gainfully occupied by the receiver OR the receiver would not be able to use the data 10ms faster. If the receiver is eager for work to do, then why deprive it of that opportunity? If you don't know, why presume?
