On Tue, 26 Dec 2006 09:07:10 -0800 Joe St Sauver <joe@oregon.uoregon.edu> wrote:
But that's all host-based -- what about at the network level?
Hi Joe, There are also the widely deployed "packet shaper" boxes that are artificially reducing throughput, including in some instances on the path between Abilene connected networks and their end hosts. I've run into this myself as you may recall me eluding to recently. This may be another good excuse for doing the report card. In some cases there is has also been no easy away around them even when the institution realizes that their placement is less than ideal for cases that are not the popular peer-to-peer music sharing (which is clearly the application these boxes were initially targetting to slow down). I'm not very excited about things like jumbo frames, in part because of the good work you did there to show hard they are to actually get end-to-end, but all it takes these days is for one middle box in the path to cripple, in any myriad of ways, an end host stack optimization. John