Fixing the Unfairness of TCP Congestion Control

duncan99 writes "George Ou, Technical Director of ZDNet, has an analysis today of an engineering proposal to address congestion issues on the internet. It's an interesting read, with sections such as "The politicization of an engineering problem" and "Dismantling the dogma of flow rate fairness". Short and long term answers are suggested, along with some examples of what incentives it might take to get this to work. Whichever side of the neutrality debate you're on, this is worth consideration."

Re:Not all sessions experience the same congestion

[Alsee]

All ISPs should be forced to sell their connections based on target utilisations. Ie here is a 10Mb/s connection, at 100:1 contention, we expect you to use 0.1Mb/s on average, or 240GB a month. If you are below that then fine, if you go above it then you get hit with per/GB charges.

The author of the article, George Ou, explains why he thinks you are a stupid and evil for suggesting such a thing. [zdnet.com] Well, he doesn't actually use the word "stupid" and I don't think he actually uses the word "evil", but yeah that is pretty much says.

You see in Australia they have a variety of internet plans like that. And the one thing that all of the plans have in common is that they are crazy expensive. Obscenely expensive.

So George Ou is right any you are wrong and stupid and evil, and the EFF is wrong and stupid and evil, and all network neutrality advocates are all wrong and stupid and evil, you are all going to screw everyone over force everyone to pay obscene ISP bills. If people don't side with George Ou, the enemy is going to make you get hit with a huge ISP bill.

Ahhhh... except the reason Australian ISP bills are obscene might have something to do with the fact that there are a fairly small number of Australians spread out across an entire continent on the bumfuck other side of the planet from everyone else.

Which might, just possibly MIGHT, mean that the crazy high Australian ISP rates kinda sorta have absolutely no valid connection to those sorts of usage-relevant ISP offerings.

So that is why George Ou is right and why you are wrong and stupid and evil and why no one should listen to your stupid evil alternative. Listen to George Ou and vote No on network neutrality or else the Network Neutrality Nazis are gonna make you pay crazy high for internet access.

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