[e2e] How many TCP flows fit in the Internet?

[Detlef Bosau]

Am 31.03.2013 20:08, schrieb Matt Mathis:
> retransmit segments that are delivered.   This region has important
> theoretical interest (it evades congestion collapse!) but is
> irrelevant from an operational perspective (nobody want to use a
> network that is so congested that the average available capacity is
> measured in bits per second.)


Particularly on this one.

I agree that no one wants to use a overloaded network. However, as long 
as we have no actual limit for the number of flows along the path, the 
situation of network overload may happen now and then.

The reason why I thought about this issue at all is still that I want to 
understand the buffer bloat phenomenon and the recent posts on that 
matter indicate that buffer bloat could be a consequence from network 
overload. Of course in combination with too large buffers on 
routers/switches. However, if we want to avoid buffer bloat and strictly 
encourage the use of reasonably limited buffer space, the problem would 
become more obvious. Particularly as flows wouldn't be simply "dropped" 
from the network but would suffer from a huge number of packet drops / 
retransmissions which would throttle the flows' goodputs.

Hence throttling a flow's /throughput /may increase a flow's /goodput/.

(The quote is credited to several persons: "If you're hurry go slow.")


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