I will be in D.C., presenting https://www.cs.kau.se/tohojo/cake/ - next week.
me know. Presently I just plan to give my talk and get the heck out of
dodge.
based shaper in cable modems. If you know the set-rate on the modem,
docsis 3.1, pie, or the sqm-scripts.
Post by d***@deepplum.comI have been one of the most prominent advocates of network neutrality. I'm
constantly informing my friends and the press about "buffering" not being
related to neutrality at all.
I think that's the best we can do.
Packet neutrality is actually a key part of the Internet's design, pushing
control mechanisms to the edge, with a minimum of "intelligence" in the
routers/switches/gateways. In particular, "content-based" and
"endpoint-address-based" targeted throttling was never how the Internet
Protocol layer was supposed to work. That's a fundamental result of the
"end-to-end argument" applied to congestion management. I've spent a lot of
time on that issue technically. The original discussions going back before
Van Jacobson's early work, up to RED and ECN, all are based on providing
congestion signalling sufficient to cause endpoints competing for resources
to adapt their behavior cooperatively in real time, while maintaining
minimal latency under load.
Latency under load is the crucial metric across the entire IP layer,
endpoints and routers. It's clear that minimizing latency under load has to
be achieved by avoiding buffering insite the network, moving it to the
source (and destination).
I've given this lecture to policy people a lot. In fact, deliberate creation
of "bloat" is a technical strategy that has been used in the past to destroy
VoIP and other real-time communicaitons. Microsoft was caught doing it
decades ago, as were some other conflicted communicaitons providers. They
could selectively delay small packets using DPI, while letting FTPs get full
speed. That's one of the reasons we coined the idea of Network Neutrality.
But radical right wingers of the sort that blossom in the paranoid world of
the dark net started arguing that the routers should have political freedom
to do whatever they damn well pleased with packets, because routers are
people just like corporations, and a "free market" is the solution to
everything.
Well, technically, the Internet doesn't work if their is not some mechanism
for eliminiating lag under load by eliminating queueing delay in bottleneck
nodes.
That's ultimately what Network Neutrality is about. There's a lot of other
crap being pushed by folks who pile on to the Network Neutrality discussion.
People want to "fix prices" for example, arguing that profits are bad. Those
guys are not the problem.
The problem is that the vertically integrated monopolists want to claim that
the Internet should be subject to Deep Packet Inspection at every router,
designed to charge rents based on content of the packets and who is the
original sender or destination of the packet - that is, charging Netflix or
NBC Universal packets nothing, and charging IPFS packets 100x as much.
So, no, the Network Neutrality people are NOT the problem with Bufferbloat.
Comcast, on the other hand, has been slow-rolling DOCSIS 3.0, because their
customers on DOCSIS 2.0 are just ordering faster service tiers to overcome
the Bufferbloat in their DOCSIS 2 CMTS's.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, June 18, 2018 3:07pm
Subject: Re: Invisibility of bufferbloat and its remedies
Post by d***@deepplum.comhttps://www.cordcuttersnews.com/3-easy-tips-to-fix-constant-buffering/
It's distressing how little the tech press understands the real problem.
Yea, that one is pretty sad.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2018&q=bufferbloat&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Post by d***@deepplum.comOf course, cable companies like Charter and ATT who have mostly DOCSIS 2
gear deployed can't admit to their plant being bloat-causing.
In fact it protects their cable business against cord cutters.
Lacking competition in general, doesn't help.
What I am actually more frustrated about is the network neutrality
advocates A) conflating "buffering" with malfeasance, rather than a
technical problem
and B) Using politics rather than technology to attempt to achieve
their goals. If *only* a few prominent members of that side of affairs
"got" that some better technology, deployed, might solve some of their
problems and make the internet better for everyone, we'd make more
progress.
fq_codel is a uniquely "american" algorithm, in that it gives the
"little guy" a little boost until it achieves parity with everyone
else.
Post by d***@deepplum.comAnd the solution is needed in the CMTS once neighbors all start becoming
heavier users, because it is a shared buffering pool with no fairness or
bloat protection.
My principle observation is that with the changes in traffic patterns
in the last decade, and the predominance of application-rate limited
streaming, that most
folk are merely forced into a bandwidth tier that is less rarely
annoying. This does not of course solve the corporate gateway problems
very well, nor does it truly kill it dead, but until that day when
"the right stuff" is readily available, and more informed demand
exists.
I was sad to see recently a cisco white paper that even ignored their
own work on pie.
Post by d***@deepplum.comStill, routers with queue management that reduce bloat would help a lot,
if "buffering" is seen frequently under load.
So why isn't anyone talking about this problem after at least a decade of
knowing it, and knowing how to fix it?
I blame IETF members, individually and collectively. If ietf exists for
any reason other than as a boondoggle for world travel, it's for resolving
issues like this one.
Heh. I have essentially abandoned the IETF as the inmates are running
the asylum, and trying to continue to make our points there was
seemingly fruitless
- and out of my budget. I'd rather stay home and get better code out
the door. Or come up with some other set of orgs to annoy into paying
attention.
I would not mind going to another IETF meeting to give a preso (on,
say, cake), but I'm unwilling to front the funds or time anymore.
--
Dave TÀht
CEO, TekLibre, LLC
http://www.teklibre.com
Tel: 1-669-226-2619