[ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet

[Jack Haverty]

I do remember that there were experiments over the years, and at least a 
few RFCs defining meanings for the values of that TOS field we put in 
the IP header.   "Stable latency" could have been a useful type of 
service, making a virtual circuit look more like an old-school actual 
circuit.   I'm not sure if it's in any of those RFCs, or the similar 
mechanisms which I gather have been defined in IPV6.

Some of those RFCs (and TOS specifications) might even have made it to 
becoming a "standard".   But IMHO the history of the Internet should 
focus on what happened "in the field" of the Internet we all use 
today.   It's hard for me as a user to tell, but I personally haven't 
seen any evidence that any OS, or application, uses those TOS settings, 
or that any ISP and/or router manufacturer has equipment that behaves 
differently depending on the TOS settings. There have been "test the 
net" services around for a while, primarily measuring throughput, but 
recently I've seen a few that at least report on latency.   Still 
haven't seen any ISP or equipment vendor touting their products' 
abilities to offer different types of service.   Perhaps that's even 
illegal now given "net neutrality"?

So it seems that the TOS functionality of IPV4 may have been evolved a 
bit with some experimentation that occurred, but it doesn't seem to have 
gotten into the live Internet.

That's one thing that led me to the observation that the History of the 
Internet should include what didn't happen, and why.

/Jack Haverty


On 8/25/21 12:54 PM, Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 8/25/2021 12:13 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> Low latency was also important for things like conversational voice,
>
> Given the new ability to be interactive with a range of 'users', there 
> was experimentation about usability issues.  Lower latency has obvious 
> benefit.  But one experiment demonstrated it was not an absolute.
>
> Given an experience with significantly /variable/ latency, where the 
> average was lower latency, versus an experience with very stable 
> latency, but at a higher average, users preferred the latter.
>
> d/
>