[ih] FC vs CC Re: [e2e] Fwd: Re: Once again buffer bloat and CC. Re: A Cute Story. Or: How to talk completely at cross purposes. Re: When was Go Back N adopted by TCP

[Larry Sheldon]

On 8/22/2014 22:34, Jack Haverty wrote:
> Not just taxis...
>
> It's been a looonnggg time, but I still remember studying a lot of
> mathematics about 50 years ago - queueing theory, graph theory, etc.
> Used to be able to do it too.
>
> My recollection is that terms such as "flow control" and "congestion
> control" were used in mathematics, well before they were used in
> computer networks.
>
> I suspect the answer to "when were the terms "flow control" and
> "congestion control" coined will be found in the history of mathematics
> - not computers.  Such terms have been in use a long time.  They were
> coined long before computers.
>
> Computer and later network people just used the terms to describe the
> behavior of flows of bits, just as earlier engineers and scientists used
> them to describe the flow of people, railroad cars, components in
> manufacturing lines, warehouse inventory, etc.
>
> For example, the problem of where to put railroad tracks, and where to
> put railroad yards (and how big) to provide "buffers" for flows of goods
> is fundamentally the same as where to put packet switches, memory,
> circuits, etc., in computer networks.
>
> The whole field of Operations Research is about that kind of math used
> in engineering, business, etc., long before computers did.
>
> Of course computers made it possible to actually do the calculations
> fast, and that changed the way the math got used.
>
> /Jack Haverty
>
>
> On 08/22/2014 07:33 AM, Vint Cerf wrote:
>> Donald Davies had the idea of an isarithmic network: a fixed number of
>> packets in the network at all times. Issues however included getting
>> "empty packets" to places with data to send. Like the taxi problem
>> where they end up at favored destinations but are not available
>> without deadheading to favored origins.
>>
>> http://www.researchgate.net/publication/224730989_The_Control_of_Congestion_in_Packet-Switching_Networks
>>
>> v
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 22, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
>> <mailto:jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>          > From: "James P.G. Sterbenz" <jpgs at ittc.ku.edu
>>      <mailto:jpgs at ittc.ku.edu>>
>>
>>          > All network historians and scientists should own ...
>>          > L. Pouzin, _The Cyclades Computer Network_, North-Holland, 1982
>>
>>      Indeed - it has an honoured place on my bookshelf. The importance of
>>      CYCLADES/CIGALE in the history of data network cannot be
>>      over-emphasized,
>>      IMO.
>>
>>          > in which congestion is covered in Chap. 4 on Cigale.
>>
>>      4.4.6, to be exact. Looking at their congestion control mechanism,
>>      it's
>>      fairly complex - not sure if it would work in a heterogeneous
>>      network like
>>      today's Internet, though. Still, interesting...
>>
>>          > There were likely much earlier Cyclades papers mentioning
>>      congestion
>>          > before this retrospective monograph.
>>
>>      Yes, about the earliest appears to be:
>>
>>        M. Irland, "Queueing analysis of a buffer allocation scheme for
>>      a packet
>>        switch", Proc. IEEE-NTC '75, New Orleans, Dec. 1975
>>
>>      There are some slightly earlier ones by him (her?), but they
>>      appear to be
>>      progress reports on a simulation project which was part of a PhD
>>      thesis at
>>      the University of Waterloo (completed in April 1977), and not widely
>>      distributed.
>>
>>
>>      In looking for the references in that book to the congestion work,
>>      though, I
>>      stumbled across this one:
>>
>>        D. W. Davies, "The Control of Congestion in Packet Switching
>>      Networks",
>>        Proc. 2nd Symp. on Problems of Optimization of Data Comm. Systems,
>>        Palo Alto, Oct. 1971
>>
>>      I don't have access to that, but it would be interesting to see
>>      what it
>>      covers.
>>
>>              Noel
>>
If you will forgive an intrusion from a lurking ignoramus.......

I would be very surprised to learn that there was nothing in the Bell 
Labs library from the early days to Traffic Engineering in connection 
with the distance dialing network development.

As remember as a toll craftsman in the 1960s tossing terms around (that 
my aging brain can't recall now) that spoke to congestion and queuing 
and route advancing and stuff, as if I knew what they all meant.


-- 
The unique Characteristics of System Administrators:

The fact that they are infallible; and,

The fact that they learn form their mistakes.