[e2e] traffic engineering considered harmful

[DJamel H. Sadok]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Bob Braden wrote:

>
>   *>
>   *> One basic type of control we would like to see is a way for a custumer to
>   *> measure network performance without having to deploy tons of application
>   *> and/or network level processes at varios points in the network. Most of
>   *> the time you only have control/access over your access point and don't
>   *> even know what the egress node of your traffic is!
>   *> I had  a look at the RON approach and it is based on some
>   *> kind of overlay network  to get performance/routing information. Is there
>   *> a simpler way of doing  these things?
>
> Djamel,
>
> A simpler way?  How about if the "customer" (what we used to call a
> host, no doubt, but the world changes) sends a probe packet to the
> destination and measures its RTT.  Or send a packet pair, etc., etc.
> You might even send some useful data on that packet.  Unnnh, maybe
> we could invent TCP.
>
> Bob Braden
>

Bob,

Ok. this maybe good for measuring simple things such as RTT, how can I
measure packet loss? actual bandwidth  the ISP makes available to my
traffic? how much it is dropping, delay (and "NOT" RTT), etc? I don't
think that TCP does that!

Djamel