Re: [aqm] ping loss "considered harmful"

Brian Trammell <ietf@trammell.ch> Mon, 02 March 2015 09:40 UTC

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From: Brian Trammell <ietf@trammell.ch>
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Date: Mon, 02 Mar 2015 10:40:37 +0100
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To: Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [aqm] ping loss "considered harmful"
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hi Dave,

> On 02 Mar 2015, at 04:57, Dave Taht <dave.taht@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On this thread over here, an otherwise pretty clueful user chose
> openwrt's qos-scripts over the sqm-scripts, because sqm-scripts had
> *higher ping loss*.

I am not proud of the fact that I am not surprised by this.

> How can we fix this user perception, short of re-prioritizing ping in
> sqm-scripts?

The real solution is to create a utility called "ping" that uses traffic that gets prioritized the same way as the traffic you care about instead of ICMP echo request/reply. Users don't care about the packets on the wire so much as they do that you're supposed to ping things.

We have a protocol for this <ippm-chair-hat> called TWAMP </ippm-chair-hat> which shares the unfortunate property with all such approaches that it requires the far end to be running a reflector (the advantage of ICMP is the reflector is built into the kernel everywhere) or worse a control protocol for setting reflectors up.

Gaming protocols do this right - latency measurement is built into the protocol. For the web we already have tools and reasonably well accepted metrics (time to first byte). Wrap $YOUR_FAVORITE_BROWSER's perftools in a ping -w <url> utility and this problem goes away in that space. I presume that rtcweb clients in the browser will take advantage of these tools and provide measurements the same way games do.

Andrew's hack is probably easier to actually get deployed in a reasonable amount of time though. :)

Cheers,

Brian

> --
> Dave Täht
> Let's make wifi fast, less jittery and reliable again!
> 
> https://plus.google.com/u/0/107942175615993706558/posts/TVX3o84jjmb
> 
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