(http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078)
My comment: a very interesting and long posting that re-cast the issue of 'net-neutrality' with an explanation of the current congestion control used in TCP and the proposed changes that re-balance net usage with regard to P2P applications. Near the end of the posting, the author says that there will be article in the May issue of IEEE Spectrum that lays out the current problems with TCP and the proposed changes. I'm looking forward to reading that article. ===== Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control Posted by George Ou @ 1:05 am Bob Briscoe (Chief researcher at the BT Network Research Centre) is on a mission to tackle one of the biggest problems facing the Internet. He wants the world to know that TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) congestion control is fundamentally broken and he has a proposal for the IETF to fix the root cause of the problem. [...] In a comprehensive article set to be published in the IEEE spectrum this May (I've seen the draft), Briscoe explains that the entire Net Neutrality debate is a misunderstanding and that the lack of fundamental fairness in the TCP standards is root cause of the problem. He explains that ISPs trying to throttle P2P applications are actually masking the real problem in the TCP standards and that it's perpetuating the illusion that everything is alright and fair. Briscoe also points out that any kind of protocol-level traffic shaping can easily be mistaken by politicians as anticompetitive behavior. Briscoe also explains that throttling P2P applications is a poor solution on a technical level because it unnecessarily slows down P2P too much and only results in marginal improvements for other applications. A better TCP implementation would allow the unattended P2P file transfers to complete just as quickly as an unmanaged network with no throttling or performance caps yet it would allow everyone else's interactive applications to burst whenever they like. While this might sound too good to be true, it isn't hard to believe once you understand that the goals of P2P file transfers and the goal of interactive applications are not mutually exclusive. Once you understand Bob Briscoe's proposal, it becomes quickly apparent that it's a win for everyone. [...] ===== -- Soh Kam Yung my Google Reader Shared links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/16851815156817689753) my Google Reader Shared SFAS links: (http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/16851815156817689753/label/sfas) _______________________________________________ Slugnet mailing list [email protected] http://www.lugs.org.sg/mailman/listinfo/slugnet
