[Bloat] datapoint from one vendor regarding bloat

[Mikael Abrahamsson]

Hi,

I talked to Nokia (former Alcatel/Lucent equipment) regarding their 
typical buffer settings on BNG. I thought their answer might be relevant 
as a data point for people to have when they do testing:

https://infoproducts.alcatel-lucent.com/cgi-bin/dbaccessfilename.cgi/3HE13300AAAATQZZA01_V1_Advanced%20Configuration%20Guide%20for%207450%20ESS%207750%20SR%20and%207950%20XRS%20for%20Releases%20up%20to%2014.0.R7%20-%20Part%20II.pdf

"mbs and cbs — The mbs defines the MBS for the PIR bucket and the cbs 
defines the CBS for the CIR bucket, both can be configured in bytes or 
kilobytes. Note that the PIR MBS applies to high burst priority packets 
(these are packets whose classification match criteria is configured with 
priority high at the ingress and are in-profile packets at the egress). 
Range: mbs=0 to 4194304 bytes; cbs=0 to 4194304 bytes Note: mbs=0 prevents 
any traffic from being forwarded. Default: mbs=10ms of traffic or 64KB if 
PIR=max; cbs=10ms of traffic or 64KB if CIR=max"

So the default setting is that they have a 10ms buffer and if a packet is 
trying to be inserted into this buffer and it's 10ms full, then that 
packet will instead be dropped.

They claimed most of their customers (ISPs) just went with this setting 
and didn't change it.

Do we have a way to test this kind of setting from the outside, for 
instance by sending a large chunk of data at wirespeed and then checking 
the characteristics of the buffering/drop for this burst of packets at 
receive side?

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