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

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

On Thu, 21 Mar 2013, Oliver Hohlfeld wrote:

> In summary, the question on how much of a problem buffer bloat currently 
> is cannot be fully answered and still requires further research.

Buffer bloat is a problem on basically all access forms apart from ETTH. 
Usually ETTH is produced using L2 or L3 switches with very small buffers 
(5 ms or so), and policing is used instead of buffering for limiting 
service rate. This means high speed TCP flows will sawtooth their 
performance over time because of large amount of consecutive drops, 
meaning low bw interactive flows are less impacted.

So it's my belief that your measurements means most people don't actually 
put congestion pressure on their accesses, thus the large buffers are 
seldom used and you're not seeing buffering.

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