GNG News Guy
03-25-2008, 09:55 AM
http://i.dslr.net/urls/84/71184.gif (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Once-Again-Someone-Proposes-Fixing-TCP-92958)
Several users have sent in this ZDNet discussion (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078) about reworking of the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) congestion control. In short, author George Ou, who in the past has badly mis-characterized (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/90036) the network neutrality debate, suggests that networks can fix P2P users' uneven consumption of bandwidth by fixing the existing TCP implementation that uses Van Jacobson s 20+ year old AIMD algorithm.Under Jacobson s algorithm, TCP currently gives the user with 11 opened TCP streams 11 times more bandwidth than the user who only uses one TCP stream. Under a weighted TCP implementation, both users get the same amount of bandwidth regardless of how many TCP streams each user opens. This is accomplished by the single-stream application tagging its TCP stream at a higher weight than a multi-stream application.
While there's some interesting discussion to be had over the efficiency of TCP, Ou's more interested in the politics of network neutrality, and buries a number of not so subtle anti-neutrality barbs in his piece that derail it quickly:Despite the undeniable truth that Jacobson s TCP congestion avoidance algorithm is fundamentally broken, many academics and now Net Neutrality activists along with their lawyers cling to it as if it were somehow holy and sacred. Groups like the Free Press and Vuze (a company that relies on P2P) files FCC complaints against ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Comcast that try to mitigate the damage caused by bandwidth hogging P2P applications by throttling P2P. They wag their fingers that P2P throttling is protocol discrimination and that it s a violation of the TCP standards.
Technically, they're "wagging their fingers" at the forgery of TCP packets because it breaks core functionality and throttles upstream P2P use for all users, regardless of whether they're heavy consumers of bandwidth. We've seen countless people propose a "fix" to TCP over the years, and it never happens -- in part because the protocol ultimately works pretty well.
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Once-Again-Someone-Proposes-Fixing-TCP-92958)
Several users have sent in this ZDNet discussion (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078) about reworking of the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) congestion control. In short, author George Ou, who in the past has badly mis-characterized (http://www.thegng.org/shownews/90036) the network neutrality debate, suggests that networks can fix P2P users' uneven consumption of bandwidth by fixing the existing TCP implementation that uses Van Jacobson s 20+ year old AIMD algorithm.Under Jacobson s algorithm, TCP currently gives the user with 11 opened TCP streams 11 times more bandwidth than the user who only uses one TCP stream. Under a weighted TCP implementation, both users get the same amount of bandwidth regardless of how many TCP streams each user opens. This is accomplished by the single-stream application tagging its TCP stream at a higher weight than a multi-stream application.
While there's some interesting discussion to be had over the efficiency of TCP, Ou's more interested in the politics of network neutrality, and buries a number of not so subtle anti-neutrality barbs in his piece that derail it quickly:Despite the undeniable truth that Jacobson s TCP congestion avoidance algorithm is fundamentally broken, many academics and now Net Neutrality activists along with their lawyers cling to it as if it were somehow holy and sacred. Groups like the Free Press and Vuze (a company that relies on P2P) files FCC complaints against ISPs (Internet Service Providers) like Comcast that try to mitigate the damage caused by bandwidth hogging P2P applications by throttling P2P. They wag their fingers that P2P throttling is protocol discrimination and that it s a violation of the TCP standards.
Technically, they're "wagging their fingers" at the forgery of TCP packets because it breaks core functionality and throttles upstream P2P use for all users, regardless of whether they're heavy consumers of bandwidth. We've seen countless people propose a "fix" to TCP over the years, and it never happens -- in part because the protocol ultimately works pretty well.
read comment(s) (http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Once-Again-Someone-Proposes-Fixing-TCP-92958)