[Bloat] What is fairness, anyway? was: Re: finally... winning on wired!

[George B.]

> As I read this thread, there are three questions that go through my mind:
>    1) since TCP is not "fair", particularly when given flows of
> different RTT's, how do we best deal with this issue?  Do either/both
> SFQ/QFQ deal with this problem, and how do they differ?
>    2) Web browsers are doing "unfair" things at the moment
> (unless/until HTTP/1.1 pipelining and/or SPDY deploys), by opening many
> TCP connections at the same time.  So it's easy for there to be a bunch
> of flows by the same user.  Is "fairness" better a per host property in
> the home environment, or a per TCP flow?  Particularly if we someday
> start diffserv marking traffic, I suspect per host is more "fair", at
> least for unmarked traffic.
>    3) since game manufacturers have noted the diffserv marking in
> PFIFO-FAST, what do these queuing disciplines currently do?
>                    - Jim
>

I have yet another question to ask:  On a system where the vast
majority of traffic is receive traffic, what can it really do to
mitigate congestion?  I send a click, I get a stream.  There doesn't
seem to be a lot I can do from my side to manage congestion in the
remote server's transmit side of the link if I am an overall receiver
of traffic.

If I am sending a bunch of traffic, sure, I can do a lot with queue
management and early detection.  But if I am receiving, it pretty much
just is what is and I have to play the stream that I am served.

George