Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 27 Aug 2001 22:49:24 -0400
From:      "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
To:        Harkirat Singh <singh@pdx.edu>
Cc:        Mike Silbersack <silby@silby.com>, Dave Zarzycki <zarzycki@FreeBSD.ORG>, Alfred Perlstein <bright@mu.org>, freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: RFC: SACK/FACK patch port to Current 
Message-ID:  <200108280249.f7S2nOZ62047@whizzo.transsys.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:04:40 PDT." <Pine.GSO.4.33.0108271751490.27335-100000@gere.odin.pdx.edu> 
References:  <Pine.GSO.4.33.0108271751490.27335-100000@gere.odin.pdx.edu> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> 
> I agree with your comment that FCAK is only a retransmission algorithm and
> many papers recommends that FACK+SACK improves the performance for
> long-delay network (for more information look at 1996 SIGCOMM paper).

Most of the hair in a TCP implementation is "only" the retransmission
algorithm.  Having been a co-author of a TCP/IP stack 20 years ago, and
been through the evolution of TCP with Van Jacobson's work, I cringe
everytime I see yet another hack in the FreeBSD TCP.  It's hard to get
right, even when you know what effect you're trying to achieve.

Consider that much of the work that resulted in slow-start and other
other related work that Van did was accompanied by a considerable of
before and after testing to measure the effect.  I sure hope someone has
done that testing and analysis of this code and the effect on the
FreeBSD TCP implementation.

I don't think that a drive-by commit of some other related work without 
a commitment to understand the code in a very deep way is wise.

If you consider the dynamic range that the TCP retransmit timers need to
operate over, it's a truly frighting thing, and folks ought not to be
anxious screw with the implementation lightly.

louie




To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200108280249.f7S2nOZ62047>