Re: [tcpm] WGLC for MSS document

[<[e-mail]>]

Can't TCP MSS also vary across multipath environments? Strikes me
that these are more common than header compression - which should
be advertising conservative minimum MTUs for their link interfaces.

<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/><[e-mail]>



-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] on behalf of Joe Touch
Sent: Thu 2009-08-20 19:28
To: Eddy, Wesley M. (GRC-MS00)[Verizon]
Cc: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [tcpm] WGLC for MSS document
 
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Hi, all,

Eddy, Wesley M. (GRC-MS00)[Verizon] wrote:
> This note starts a 2-week Working Group Last Call on the TCPM document:
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-tcpmss-02
> Please send any comments to the TCPM list.  The WGLC will last until
> September 1.

I'd like to suggest the following for this doc:

MSSs can sometimes vary, as when used with variable compression, e.g.,
ROHC. The ROHC doc missed an opportunity to address the interaction of
variable MSS with TCP, and this might be a good place to include a
sentence or two on it, e.g. (IMO):

- ---

MSSs can sometimes vary, as when used with variable compression, e.g.,
ROHC [RFC5255]. It is tempting for TCP to want to advertise the largest
possible MSS, to support the most efficient use of compressed payloads.
Unfortunately, some compression schemes occasionally need to transmit
full headers (and thus smaller payloads) to resynchronize state at their
endpoint compressor/decompressors. If the largest MSS is advertised, TCP
retransmission may interfere with compressor resynchonization.

As a result, when effective MSS varies, TCP SHOULD compute its
advertised MSS based on the smallest effective MSS.

- ---

Joe