THE FUTURE OF TCP: TRAIN-WRECK OR EVOLUTION? http://yuba.stanford.edu/trainwreck/
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Stanford University, CA, USA 1 April, 2008 IMPORTANT DATES REGISTRATION DEADLINE 17 MARCH, 2008 Spurred on by a widespread belief that TCP is showing its age and needs replacing - and a deeper understanding of the dynamics of congestion control - the research community has brought forward many new congestion control algorithms. There has been lots of debate about the relative merits and demerits of the new schemes; and a standardization effort is under way in the IETF. But before the next congestion control mechanism is deployed, it will need to be deployed widely in operating systems and - in some cases - in switches and routers too. This will be a long road, requiring the buy-in of many people: Researchers, product developers and business leaders too. Our own experience of proposing new congestion control algorithms has been met with the challenge: "Show me the compelling need for a new congestion control mechanisms?", and "What will really happen to the Internet (and my business) if we keep TCP just the way it is?" As a community, we need examples that are simple to understand, and demonstrate a compelling need for change. We call them the "Train wreck scenarios". Examples might show that distribution of video over wireless in the home will come to a halt without new algorithms. Or that P2P traffic will bring the whole network crashing down. Or that huge, high-performance data-centers need new algorithms. Whatever your favorite example, we believe that if we are collectively armed with a handful of mutually agreed examples, it will be much easier to make a business case for change. Or put another way, if we can't articulate compelling examples to industry leaders, then is the cost and risk of change worth it? The goal of the workshop is to identify a handful of really compelling demonstrations of the impending train-wreck. The outcome will be a set of canonical examples that we will use to persuade industry of the need for change. The whole purpose of the workshop it to focus on the problem, not the solutions. We are most definitely not interested in your favorite scheme, or ours. We will video the entire workshop and all the demonstrations, and make it publicly available on the Internet. We will make any proceedings and talks available too. The goal is to open up the demonstrations for public scrutiny and feedback after the event. The event is hosted by the Stanford Clean Slate Program and local arrangements will be made by the Stanford Computer Forum. The workshop has received offers of support and funding from Cisco Systems and Microsoft. The workshop will feature 8 demos, and 3 invited talks. You can find the agenda and the registration information at - http://yuba.stanford.edu/trainwreck/ *Please distribute to your research or product groups and others who would be interested in attending* _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
