[ih] Loss as a congestion signal [internet-history Digest, Vol 84, Issue 4]

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 22/05/2014 07:08, Noel Chiappa wrote:

> I fairly vividly remember being the IETF where Van gave his first talk about
> his congestion work, and when he started talking about how a lost packet was
> a congestion signal, I think we all went 'wow, that's so obvious - how come
> we never thought of that'!

I wasn't there so I have no right to comment on this, but it's
surely the case that actual bit destruction causing non-congestive
packet loss was a much bigger worry in the 1970s than it was
ten years later?

And indeed when actual packet loss became a significant factor
with the rise of wireless networks some years ago, it proved
that treating it mainly as a congestion signal was (and is)
problematic. If you have a path that includes both loss-prone
and congestion-prone segments, TCP doesn't work so well.
(See http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/87/slides/slides-87-nwcrg-4.pdf
for example.)

   Brian