[e2e] TCP in outer space

[Jim Gettys]

> Sender: end2end-interest-admin at postel.org
> From: Fred Baker <fred at cisco.com>
> Subject: Re: [e2e] TCP in outer space
> -----
material elided...
> 
> But it really only gets rid of one round trip in a session that generally
> requires at least three or four, which seems like a pretty small
> optimization. An HTTP request for a web page could carry the HTTP GET data
> on the SYN packet, and the data coming in reply could be on the SYN-ACK,
> but if there is any loss at all in the network you are going to see some
> level of retransmission anyway, and the mean web page (10K, I'm told) is
> still going to take several segments and at least a couple of round trips.
> Email is a much deeper kettle of fish; sure, you could carry the EHELO on
> the SYN packet, but how much would that help with the succession of "From",
> "To", "Data", and "end of data" messages that SMTP carries?
> 

You are falling for the classic mean versus median disease....

The mean and median are very different.

In fact, things tend to be bimodal in the web: small HTML documents,
and then large images or other transfers.

So you'd get, me thinks, good benefit from all this.

Not to mention the reduction in human perceptible latency: you
can't figure out what to fetch until you have the HTML in your hands,
which will tend to be the short initial transaction....
				- Jim

--
Jim Gettys
Technology and Corporate Development
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg at pa.dec.com