On Tue, 09 Apr 2002 00:32:50 +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum said:
Obviously some applications care. In addition to the examples mentioned earlier: out of order packets aren't really good for TCP header compression, so they will slow down data transfers over slow links.
On the other hand, wouldn't this sort of slow link tend to close down the TCP window and thus tend to minimize the effect? A quick back-of-envelope calculation gives me a 56K modem line only opening the window up to 10K or so - so there should only be 5-6 1500 byte packets in flight at a given time, so the chances of *that flow* getting out-of-order at a core router that's flipping 200K packets/sec are fairly low. Not saying it doesn't happen, or that it isn't a problem when it does - but I'm going to wait till somebody posts a 'netstat' output showing that it is in fact an issue for some environments... -- Valdis Kletnieks Computer Systems Senior Engineer Virginia Tech