> On Feb 11, 2025, at 11:05 PM, Sebastian Moeller 
> <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Joe,
> 
> On 7 February 2025 23:17:38 CET, Joe Touch <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Feb 7, 2025, at 2:12 PM, Ryan Hamilton <[email protected]> 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>> ….
>>> Let's not hobble the performance of modern protocols in order to 
>>> *potentially* provide minimal improvements to the performance of obsolete 
>>> implementations.
>> 
>> Agreed. As I noted, RFC3819 still has imo the best advice:
>> 
>>  This suggests that subnetwork implementers should try to avoid packet
>>  reordering whenever possible, but not if doing so compromises
>>  efficiency, impairs reliability, or increases average packet delay.
> 
> [SM] This really is just stating that reordering and undoing reordering have 
> both positive and negative effects. IMHO it completely fails to give 
> actionable advice how to assess and weigh these effects objectively to 
> conclude whether/how much reordering in a given circumstance is acceptable or 
> not.
> In a BCP I would have wished for at least an example how this trade off is 
> assesses in practice... (or multiple examples if the exact circumstances 
> matter a lot).

Actionable advice is context dependent - it varies based on the measure of 
“efficiency”, “reliability”, and “increased delay”.

> In a later post you assess that 13ms reordering window acceptable and in 
> accordance with the above recommendations, so let me ask, what is the 
> threshold for acceptable and non-acceptable (max) reordering-induced delays?

My metric is that delay increase matter only when they are a significant 
fraction of the current message latency. 13ms probably under 25% of most 
Internet delays, if not lower. It’s also a small fraction (about 1/6) of the 
delay a human would notice (100ms). So its impact is small both relatively 
(25%) and as an absolute (1/6 of notiicible).

But the point above applies - I’m using my metrics. You might use others. No 
absolute or more specific advice is appropriate than what the doc already says.

> Without objective measures for the positive and negative effects and how to 
> aggregate both, I am not sure RFC3819 really is all that useful in regards to 
> reordering.

Even a research paper with such detail would provide advice for one situation 
at most. BCPs provide more general advice.

If what you want is a doc that says “DOCSIS v3.25 should not reorder”, that’s 
fine - but not a BCP.

Joe

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