[e2e] Is a non-TCP solution dead?

[David P. Reed]

Apropos of not very much ... the following actually happened in 1992.   I 
was talking to a NYNEX marketing/planning exec, arguing that they ought to 
roll out ISDN more aggressively here in the Boston area because so many 
hightech and university people were using remote terminals, and that they 
would be able to test the market.   He said that their marketing data 
didn't show any interest or use of data at all in residences, and 
challenged me to prove that there was a ready market.    I asked how he 
could tell, and he said that they knew exactly how many data lines there 
were in homes in the Boston area.  I said, oh wow, how do you know when 
people are using modems on residential phone lines?   Do your switches 
recognize modem signals?   His response (classic!) was "what do you mean? 
It's illegal to send data on residential lines." (implying that you had to 
have a special line to send data)   (I guess he missed the Carterphone 
decision).

Lots of (perhaps most) multimedia streaming ends up flowing on TCP 
connections to get past NAT boxes...  but still, the real question is how 
much of that is there, compared with non-streaming media (like Napster).

At 02:10 PM 4/24/2003 -0700, Cannara wrote:
>John, I don't know enough about Inet2 to argue, but what you say makes sense
>from what my friends at Stanford, who manage parts of the SU net, have to
>say.  I believe, as the other emails have pointed out, that unless one
>actually looks at pkt contents, one can't really get good stats, due to the
>mimicking of TCP to get through filters.  This is likely why tools used by
>CAIDA, Sprint, etc. would have to be examined to see what they're actually
>looking at, if anything, other than simple port #s.
>
>Alex
>
>John Kristoff wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:33:37 -0700
> > Cannara <cannara at attglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> > > John, the various non-TCP flows that have been increasing, and are
> > > planned to be used even more in the future, center on media
> > > communications, such as audio& video streaming, as well as IP phone,
> > > conferencing, etc.  I'm not sure that Inet2 is representative for
> > > what's going on in the bulk of the net.
> >
> > I've heard that before and I'm not sure I can buy it without seeing some
> > additional data showing that to be the case.
> >
> > My intuition tells me that I2 is probably more representative of non-TCP
> > than one might first imagine.  There are plenty of audio, video,
> > conferencing and VoIP projects taking place over I2, perhaps in many
> > cases more so than other parts of the net.  The reason I'm lead to
> > believe that it would be fairly representative of non-TCP protocols is
> > because generally the I2 community networks are relatively open.  Its
> > users are probably much more likely to be able to use non-TCP protocols.
> > Whereas in many other places, protocols, ports and applications are
> > often heavily filtered.  In fact, I might be tempted to think that many
> > of those non-TCP applications you're referring to may often be running
> > over TCP port 80 to get past filters.
> >
> > John