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Date:      Thu, 18 Jul 2002 17:33:17 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
To:        Jonathan Lemon <jlemon@flugsvamp.com>
Cc:        net@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sys/netinet tcp_timer.h
Message-ID:  <200207182133.g6ILXHNl007758@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20020718154341.D78047@prism.flugsvamp.com>
References:  <local.mail.freebsd-committers/20020717211230.G83269-100000@patrocles.silby.com> <200207181608.g6IG8dN82437@prism.flugsvamp.com> <200207181732.g6IHW9rY018853@apollo.backplane.com> <20020718133111.B78047@prism.flugsvamp.com> <200207181857.g6IIv9ei019345@apollo.backplane.com> <20020718125410.K91443@nexus.root.com> <20020718154341.D78047@prism.flugsvamp.com>

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[Trying desparately to move this discussion to the correct list....]

I spent a few minutes talking to Dave Clark about this question this
afternoon.  Here's my paraphrase of his opinion:

- He disclaims completely up-to-date knowledge of the current research
results.

- He feels that 1000 ms is commonly used only because the historical
BSD implementation couldn't do any better (it actually did 750 ms +/-
250 ms), and supports the idea that retransmits could occur more
frequently.  He has traces which show where a longer RTO would be both
beneficial and harmful.

- He questioned whether the traditional VJ `srtt + 4*rttvar'
computation captures enough of the variance in the real Internet to
avoid unnecessary slow retransmits.

- He notes that Microsoft's TCP had a serious problem wherein it would
slow-retransmit too aggressively, which resulted in almost any network
transient triggering sufficient dupacks to cause fast retransmit to
engage.  (The result was that every data packet would be sent twice.)
He suggests that, to avoid this, it may be necessary to lengthen the
slow-retransmit timeout after a fast retransmit is triggered.

- He also notes that there have not been screams of protest since
Linux adopted the 200-ms minimum, which suggests that it's not a
completely hare-brained value.

-GAWollman


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