[Bloat] How do we shift the market?

[richard]

On Sun, 2011-02-06 at 11:42 -0500, Jim Gettys wrote:
> A) Today, "speed" has been conflated with "bandwidth", where we now know 
> that that is naive and hurtful, and that latency under load is key for a 
> large variety of applications.
> 
> Shifting this discussion from speed == bandwidth in the marketplace to 
> something more nuanced and sensible is key; ultimately money talks.
> 
We should probably come up with a list of key words/phrases that such
tests and comments and complaints and such can be easily categorized
under - terms that can be used in a marketing sense.

Things like "multi-mode stress test" or "bandwidth-latency test"
Or how about a set of classifications of equipment based on what they
can deal with: 1-user throughput, family-capable throughput or???

How about "twitch latency" for the gamer market?

It's hard to talk cohesively about the problem if we don't all use the
same terms with the same implied (and defined) words. Getting at least
some of them nailed down now will make a difference in the long run.

I see wiki.bufferbloat.net has the "It Works" up on it - a page here on
terms would be a good thing.

> 
> B) Tests demonstrate the problems anyone can run.
> 
> There are several tests likely to come on line over the next months to 
> help the situation:
> 	o The FCC SamKnows tests are putting in/have put in a latency under 
> load test; I don't know when early results will appear.
> 	o at sometime later this year, the Ookla folks (e.g. speedtest.net) may 
> add a test; they are in the middle of a major platform upgrade though, 
> and the dust from that needs to settle before they can put effort there.
> 
> I'd really like to get really good easy demonstrations on-line and not 
> wait/rely on others here.
> 
> Unless people can easily see if they are suffering, it remains a 
> hypothetical.  The sooner they can reliably induce suffering on 
> themselves, the sooner it becomes concrete.
> 
> Also note that both of the commercial tests above don't help network 
> operators much (e.g. corporate networks), with diagnosing *where* the 
> problems are.  That's why something like pingplotter is sooo important, 
> we want heat going toward the right problems, not simply heat entering 
> the system without pointing a finger where the problem is located!
> 
> C) direct market pressure:
> 
> The challenges I see include:
> 	a) ensuring that various manufacturers understand that their feet are 
> going to be held to the fire on this metric so that maybe they start 
> putting engineering resources into fixing their product. When they do, 
> having working examples (e.g. OpenWRT, and 3g home gateway and others) 
> that shows why it can be a competitive differentiator in the short run 
> and will become and existential issue in the long run (you won't be able 
> to sell bloated hardware any more).

Getting the paying public to all start talking to the tech support
departments with the same concerns and same key words would help
tremendously.
"when are you going to fix my router's buffer bloat problem - I'm a
multi-use family customer and when my daughter uploads her camera phone
my son screams about the twitch latency?"

> 	Certainly we need to hit up both the engineering press, but also 
> mainstream business press so that the senior management of those now 
> very large companies start to pay attention.

Headline: ISPs demand new software from router manufacturers and
customers threaten class action suits over buffer bloat and poor twitch
latency. :)


> 	b) make sure those who do testing and recommendation of products to 
> consumers understand and start shining the light of day on the latency 
> problems. So there's a lot of work to do to talk to and educate the 
> likes of cnet, pcmag, smallnetbuilder, andatech, Tom's hardware etc.
> 
> It's not clear to me that this to reach out to the consumer kit 
> reviewers should be started until we have at least existence proofs of 
> properly working debloated kit in hand.  But as soon as we do, I'd love 
> to put a properly working router into the hands of such people, and say: 
> run this simple test on both this kit, and the other stuff you 
> review.....  Bingo, the case gets made...
> 
> D) apropos of other discussions here: A lot of SLA's only talk about 
> bandwidth, or packet loss (currently preferably zero with all that 
> implies); education toward those who write those agreements that latency 
> under load must be a metric in those agreements.
> 
> But if we don't shift the market discussion, bufferbloat won't get 
> fixed, nor avoided in the future.
> 		- Jim
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-- 
Richard C. Pitt                 Pacific Data Capture
rcpitt at pacdat.net               604-644-9265
http://digital-rag.com          www.pacdat.net
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