[Bloat] [tsvwg] how much of a problem is buffer bloat today?

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Thu, 21 Mar 2013, Jim Gettys wrote:

> Every more modern TCP can easily fill any sized buffer given time with a 
> single TCP connection.

I agree with this, I made this discovery myself back in 2004 or so, and 
had to implement Fairqueue and WRED on my home connection to make it 
bearable to use any interactive application while transferring files.

In IETF75 in Stockholm in 2009, I made proposals in both TCP and at open 
mic in one of the sessions, that I would like to see statistics and 
performance numbers on packet loss, delay variation etc from actual 
traffic. The IP stack has great insight in what the network conditions are 
(especially with TCP Timestamping), but as far as I know it's not really 
exported in any usable format to the user. My idea was to have some kind 
of dashboard for the user to show if currently the network was the 
limiting factor, if the tcp window was maxed out etc. Would also be nice 
if there was output that could be cut/pasted and attached to a fault 
report in case the customer talks to customer support. It would be good if 
this was actually a standard so all OSes did the same.

I am not aware of any such work going on, so I'd like to know if anyone 
else is aware of work in this area?

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: swmike at swm.pp.se