[e2e] Why do we need TCP flow control (rwnd)?

[Jim Gettys]

On Tue, 2008-07-01 at 08:22 -0700, Fred Baker wrote:

> We have not just predicted congestive collapse, we have experienced  
> it. Those events, the most well-known one being the collapse of the 56  
> KBPS NSFNet in 1987-1988 and the more recent instances being local  
> phenomena with under-provisioned networks, don't result from silly  
> assumptions. They originate from traffic from real applications with  
> real humans behind them on real networks.

Heh.  Some of us still have scars on their backs from this experience:
it caused the formation of the X Consortium (since we no longer believed
distributed development was viable), which in the long term was to X11's
detriment.

Congestion collapse is not just a predicted phenomena, but one which
we've experienced.  It got so bad we were reduced to FEDX of mag tapes
for a while.
                                 - Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child