[Bloat] Not all the world's a WAN

[BeckW at telekom.de]

> [...]so over short intervals the switch's aggregate incoming bandwidth (multiple 10GbE links from
> servers) is larger than its outgoing bandwidth (single 10GbE link to client).

Well, this kind of burstiness is the reason why we have buffers at all.

Restricting the window size limits the TCP speed and keeps it this way from overflowing the buffer outside of bursty periods.

ECN marking helps TCP to distinguish between really available bandwidth and 'fake' bandwidth that just fills up a buffer, at least if the feedback loop is fast enough. Do ethernet switches support ECN marking?