Re: [homegate] HOMENET working group proposal

[Fred Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Jul 12, 2011, at 9:11 AM, ken carlberg wrote:

> ...I was wondering where something like buffer-bloat, and in particular supporting/managing AQM, would fit in given the above.  Jim Getty's talk at the last IETF meeting was well received and appeared to open some eyes to an issue that seemed to have been easily overseen.  My impression is that work in Home Networks could help address some of the items that Jim brought up in his presentation.

I think that the need is felt in home, SOHO, and hotel (eg, broadband last mile) networks, and suggestions I have made along such lines have focused on them. However, the topic is closer to the charter of tsvwg IMHO, except in the ways that it manifests in broadband interfaces (the fact of the router, modem, CMTS/DSLAM, and upstream router being separate entities with separate buffers). The problem is in essence that ECN/AQM is generally not implemented in such networks, in part because there is a sense on the carrier side that loss is a bad thing, and in part because tuning the algorithms can be a pain. What the Georgia Tech folks have worked out, as much as anything, is an acceptable configuration driven by user perceptions rather than research optimizations (eg, for them it's not about finding the absolute knee of the curve and making the combined queue be as thin as possible, but finding a pragmatic solution that is predictable and acceptable to the typical user).