Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!sri-spam!mordor!lll-tis!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!MITRE.ARPA!mckee From: mckee@MITRE.ARPA (H. Craig McKee) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Internet Uselessness Message-ID: <8707211807.AA09192@mitre.arpa> Date: Tue, 21-Jul-87 14:07:23 EDT Article-I.D.: mitre.8707211807.AA09192 Posted: Tue Jul 21 14:07:23 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jul-87 04:22:06 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The MITRE Corp., Washington, D.C. Lines: 41 >As a whole, I think the internet community has been doing "clever >engineering" for quite a number of years now. However, there >comes a time when offered load just overwhelms the resources >devoted to the task. We are very close to that point on the >ARPANET, even though we just made the routing algorithm more >"clever" and added another transcontinental trunk. COMMENT: "Clever Engineering" - The ARPANET has been around for 17 Years and there is still a need for clever engineering; that's discouraging. >We are currently in the process of implementing congestion >control in the PSNs. This should optimize the total available >throughput of the network (at the expense of backing flows into >source hosts if necessary). COMMENT: With about a hundred different flavors of TCP/IP, some (many?) of which are network-hostile, the subscriber community is forcing the ARPANET designers to defend themselves. >Finally, the X.25 spec really says nothing about what goes on in >the subnet, it is just an interface spec between a DTE and its >DCE. Internally, the PSNs use virtual circuits to support both >AHIP (1822) and X.25 traffic while using good old dynamic >adaptive routing to get the packets between the endpoint PSNs. >Internally, neither AHIP nor X.25 data packets contain full >addressing information, just the destination PSN number and a >connection identifier at that PSN. So I guess you might say that >we "do it right". COMMENT: I didn't say it, Andy Malis said it: "...PSNs use virtual circuits ... packets [DO NOT] contain full addressing information." Then why are we flogging the network 40 octets of header per packet? Isn't it time to swallow our embarrassment and admit that while TCP/IP looks good on paper, in the reality of limited bandwidth and unstable network delays, TCP/IP is, in fact, a Bad Idea? The subscriber and network communities need to work together and come up with a scheme that doesn't hammer the network to its knees when something goes wrong. The Commercial/PTT networks can do it, why can't we?