Re: [rtcweb] Meaning of SHOULD support/use interleaving

["Mo Zanaty (mzanaty)" <[e-mail]>]

> What resource is being conserved by not just requiring it?

8 bytes per packet (for MID+FSN).

Michael, the current NDATA draft requires it to be used for all messages if negotiated. Can’t this be relaxed / optimized to use it for all *fragmented* messages but use DATA for non-fragmented messages to avoid the 8 byte overhead for small messages (like game telemetry/control, an often cited use of data channels).

The current NDATA draft also says you can’t interleave fragmented messages in a stream, so head of line blocking remains for all fragmented messages, while only small non-fragmented messages can avoid it. This dilutes the utility of NDATA, perhaps enough to make apps that really care about head of line blocking to implement their own app layer fragmentation with messages well below common MTUs, hence defeating NDATA. Can’t this also be relaxed since MID is part of the NDATA extra header?

If those two issues are resolved, I see no argument against making NDATA a MUST in data channels.

Mo

PS. Some believe data channels will be more widely used than WebRTC media (webtorrent, etc.), so it does make sense to consider the desirable properties of a general peer-to-peer transport, and drop the WebRTC prefix when talking about data channels.