Re: congestion control? - (was Re: Appointment of a Transport Area Director)

[Wesley Eddy <[e-mail]>]

On 3/5/2013 3:01 PM, Cameron Byrne wrote:
> 
> In the 3GPP case of GSM/UMTS/LTE, the wireless network will never drop
> the packet, by design.  It will just delay the packet as it gets
> resent through various checkpoints and goes through various rounds of
> FEC.  The result is delay, TCP penalties that assume delay is loss,
> ... the end result is that every 3GPP network in the world (guessing)
> has proxies in place to manipulate TCP so that when you go to
> speedtest.net your $serviceprovider looks good.  Is this good
> cross-layer optimization, no... but this is how it is.
> 
> So, fundamentals of CC and TCP have resulted in commercial need for
> middleboxes in the core of the fastest growing part of the internet.
> This is sometimes known as "tcp optmization" or "WAN acceleration",
> both murky terms.
> 


There may be some things the IETF can do to improve this.  It's not
clear yet, but some of the relevant vendors are participating in a
non-WG mailing list, focused on one aspect of the situation (TCP
option numbers), but recently more ambitious work was suggested:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/middisc/current/msg00121.html

People who are interested in this, should *definitely* self-organize
a bit and think about a BoF, in my opinion.

-- 
Wes Eddy
MTI Systems