[ih] Throwing packets away

[Vint Cerf]

we assumed that the transmission system(s) below IP level would not be  
guaranteed (ethernet and packet radio and dynamically shared satellite  
channels did not have the same properties that ARPANET had). So we  
built into the TCP layer a re-transmission scheme. This led to the  
need for re-sequencing and detection and discard of duplicates. The  
flow control in TCP was adapted from the CYCLADES sliding window  
mechanism. Gateways (before they were called routers) had finite  
storage and because packet networks were NOT synchronous end-to-end,  
there was the potential for congestion. You might have a 10 Mb/s  
interface on one end sending to a dialup device on the other end. A  
good deal of experimentation went into the TCP round-trip time  
estimates and packet loss was assumed to be a potential hazard. Van  
Jacobson was a pioneer in the development of mechanisms to discipline  
TCP flow control, and slow-start to detect when congestion resulted in  
packet loss. The capacity of a dynamically shared packet net varies  
continuously depending on the traffic matrix. It is not like circuit  
switching where capacity is dedicated and unused even when no traffic  
is flowing between pairs of end points. Consequently, there was need  
to adapt the flow control window on a more-or-less continuous basis  
and the potential for congestion produced a concomitant packet loss  
potential. one of the interesting statistical observations was that  
fair allocation of capacity among dynamic flows could be achieved by  
random discard of packets (rather than discarding the packet that  
encountered the buffer overflow). This was referred to variously as  
"random early discard." Finally, a crude signal was devised to  
indicate congestion back to the source when a packet was discarded for  
lack of buffer space.



vint

On Nov 3, 2009, at 2:39 AM, John R. Levine wrote:

> [ Feel free to point me at documents or archives I should have read if
>  this is a FAQ. I have at least read RFC 635. ]
>
> I'm trying to understand the origins of the TCP/IP approach to  
> congestion management by throwing excess packets away, which I  
> gather was a pretty radical idea.
>
> It is my impression that the ARPAnet used a reservation approach so  
> that the source end wasn't supposed to send a packet until the  
> destination end said it had room for that packet, with resends  
> primarily for line errors. TCP went to byte windows and congestion  
> discarding partly to make it more adaptable to varying network  
> speeds, partly to unify the virtual circuit
> management, and that it took a fair amount of twiddling of the  
> details of TCP to get good performance out of it.
>
> CYCLADES had a lot of these features.  Did the window and congestion  
> discards come from there, or somewhere else, or some combination?
>
> Signed,
> Confused in Trumansburg