[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 23:21, Larry Sheldon wrote:
> 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 wish my toys would stop helping me edit this stuff.....

>
> 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    Labs library from the early days of Traffic Engineering in connection
> with the distance dialing network development.
>
> As remember as a toll craftsman in the 1960s tossing terms around (that
 > I 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.