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Date:      Fri, 7 Feb 2003 09:37:47 +0100 (CET)
From:      Harti Brandt <brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de>
To:        Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>
Cc:        Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org>, chat@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: High-latency/long-distance IP stack (was Re: cvs commit: CVSROOT access access.master access.ports)
Message-ID:  <20030207093019.O3730@beagle.fokus.gmd.de>
In-Reply-To: <15939.36.855969.496240@emerger.yogotech.com>
References:  <20030205233916.6156C2A89E@canning.wemm.org> <20030205231630.D32815-100000@patrocles.silby.com> <20030206022854.G40993@12-234-22-23.pyvrag.nggov.pbz> <15939.36.855969.496240@emerger.yogotech.com>

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On Thu, 6 Feb 2003, Nate Williams wrote:

NW>[ Moved to -chat ]
NW>
NW>> > Didn't Harti Brandt say that he was working on satelite communications?
NW>> > Perhaps he has plans to allow even larger RTTs to work well. :)
NW>> >
NW>> > "FreeBSD:  The best connection to Mars... or AOL"
NW>>
NW>> You laugh, but various people, including Vint Cerf, are currently working
NW>> on an IP stack (or something that can be made to look like an IP stack)
NW>> that will work across those kinds of distances.
NW>
NW>It really isn't that hard to do that, IMNSHO.  The hardest part is
NW>finding good 'initial' values for timeouts (if the first packet gets
NW>lost), since you don't want *too* long if it happens that the link is
NW>short.  (Been there, done that. :)
NW>
NW>Once you get the initial 'broad' issues sorted out and understand that
NW>packet loss != congestion, the above stack isn't that hard to
NW>build/design.

In fact there are such stacks: SCPS and now the CCSDS protocol suite. Some
of the CCSDS protocols are designed to work over distances to mars (they
are quite different from TCP, however).

What is missing from current FreeBSD is clearly SACK. Even when doing TCP
to the moon SACK can help. In the last two years I have seen at least two
announcements of people that have offered a SACK implementation to
FreeBSD. Unfortunately non of the TCP experts in the FreeBSD camp took a
chance to get this into the tree.

A minor problem is that there should be some documentation on how to tune
FreeBSD TCP for long fat pipes. There are a number of non-abvious sysctls
you have to tune to get it working.

An yes, the current RTT stuff in FreeBSD is broken. I'm running my
measurement machines on HZ=10000. RTTs are counted in ticks. There is a
point where RTT computation breaks.

harti
-- 
harti brandt, http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/cats/employees/hartmut.brandt/private
              brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de, harti@freebsd.org

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