> On 14 Apr, 2020, at 10:46 pm, Toerless Eckert <[email protected]> wrote: > > I have been somewhat following how in the face of COVID-19, > the appropriate way to manage congestion control in the Internet > seem to be heads of countries reaching out to the one large content provider > they know (Netflix) and ask him to reduce bandwidth pressure on the > Internet. Of course, heads of states with differently aged children > would know that Disney+ or Apple might be other relevant streaming > providers to reach out to, but alas, we have forgotten to elect > those heads of states on such key criteria. > > That was of course tongue in cheek of course, but i was somewhat surprised > that nobody took up the opportunity so far to ask something like "how are we > doing on Net Neutrality" ?, or "what the heck would we actually want it to > be" ? > > I can see a lot of operational short term workarounds to > approximate solutions less silly than phoning CEOs of random companies, > but it really strikes me as highly strange that events like the > ones we're in right now should not have us re-think to what extend > our current presumed strategy is sufficient…
I'm pretty sure that if ISPs implemented congestion control measures correctly at layer 3, there would be no need to take traffic-source-specific actions so high up the stack (beyond the machine layers) to merely ensure that backhaul networks and peering arrangements are not flooded into oblivion. I'm talking about simple, well-understood measures such as: 1: Implement AQM at every potential bottleneck, to limit effect of excess traffic on latency & reliability. In this context, even WRED without ECN is better than nothing, but doing better would be nice. 2: Share bottleneck capacity fairly between subscribers, so that one household's heavy traffic doesn't unduly impact the service to other households. Want to download three Steam games, five Netflix streams and a 500-peer BitTorrent swarm all at once? Go right ahead, but your next-door neighbour will get just as much bandwidth for his videoconference call about keeping a factory production line going. If those two measures were widely implemented, there would be no need for data caps, and streaming services' existing quality adjustment algorithms would automatically adjust to match available capacity. There are already published RFCs detailing all the necessary technology to make this work. It's already available in many end-hosts and CPE boxes. It's just not widely deployed and switched on in ISPs' networks, where it can do the most good. But there *are* a few ISPs who have done it, and thus might be good sources of practical expertise on the subject, if only the industry at large was willing to listen. - Jonathan Morton _______________________________________________ OPSAWG mailing list [email protected] https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/opsawg
