On 5 Mar 2011, at 15:30, Eddie Kohler wrote:

> Well, TFRC is only one of DCCP WG's four chartered areas.

but it's the only one that doesn't treat DCCP as an (increasingly internally 
focused, imo) end in itself.


> DCCP implementation and deployment experience seems to show that rate-based 
> protocols are simply harder to implement than ack-paced protocols.

But that experience has also shown that newly-assigned protocol numbers are 
rather limited on the public Internet. (SCTP has the same problem, despite 
being rather older - but SCTP has history and installed base outside the public 
NATted Internet.)


>  You 
> shouldn't want TFRC, which is a means to an end.  What end?  Unreliable 
> congestion control?

Indeed, because congestion control and avoiding congestion collapse (but 
without massive reengineering of the underlying network) remains a significant 
concern. Well, a significant concern of the IESG.


> DCCP is a mechanism for experimenting with TFRC and with potential 
> alternatives -- different AIMD parameters, etc.

That we agree on.


> I don't think I'll respond to another of your emails, however.

Oh no! he's killfiled Larry!


> Eddie
> 
> 
> On 3/5/11 4:20 AM, [email protected] wrote:
>> The point of asking the question? It's an economics argument, using terms 
>> from that discipline - the recognition of "opportunity cost"; that continued 
>> effort spent on e.g. improving DCCP specifications or doing DCCP-over-UDP 
>> could be going elsewhere to greater benefit and effect.
>> 
>> Lots of important work was done on e.g. ATM adaptation layers or on the ISO 
>> OSI model. (Or on Adobe Flash.) But that doesn't mean that those "sunk 
>> costs" (the time and effort spent on the important work already done) have 
>> to continue to be maintained by further development if the benefits aren't 
>> there.
>> 
>> Do the "prospective benefits" of a protocol that can't be deployed outweigh 
>> the "sunk costs"? Or is the problem of applications sending traffic without 
>> considering congestion control better solved by e.g. 'here's an open-source 
>> library that runs directly over UDP for your UDP-using application to 
>> implement its own endpoint congestion control'?
>> 
>> Insofar as DCCP tests TFRC algorithms and acts as an example, it has some 
>> useful role for experimentation (rather than standards track) -- but wider 
>> deployment of TFRC, in whatever form, is what matters, while widespread DCCP 
>> deployment for applications to rely on appears to me to be a lost cause even 
>> with the kludging to make DCCP run over UDP.
>> 
>> It's an algorithm deployment issue, not a protocol deployment issue. The 
>> goal is widespread TFRC use, and widespread DCCP deployment to get to 
>> widespread TFRC use is unlikely to happen. How best to get widespread 
>> adoption of TFRC itself?
>> 
>> Lloyd Wood
>> [email protected]
>> http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/
>> 
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On
>>> Behalf Of Michael Welzl
>>> Sent: 05 March 2011 09:48
>>> To: 'dccp' working group
>>> Subject: Re: [dccp] AD review: draft-ietf-dccp-tfrc-rtt-option-03
>>> 
>>> constructive: when, or *at least* after developing a
>>> protocol, think about deployment: why would people use it,
>>> how can we get them to use it, how can we make it easier for
>>> the protocol to pass through middle- boxes etc?
>>> 
>>> destructive: when the perhaps most important work is done -
>>> thinking about actual deployment - call it a futile effort already.
>>> 
>>> i wonder, what's the point of being destructive?
>>> 
>>> michael

Lloyd Wood
[email protected]
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood



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