[ih] How Plato Influenced the Internet

[Bob Purvy]

well, 23 years later it can be revealed Packeteer *did* break all the
rules, and the customers didn't care.

No, we didn't use the TOS bits. The Packet Shaper had its own set of
policies that users would tweak, e.g. to guarantee bandwidth or limit
recreational apps during work hours (Stanford's network used this, in
particular).

It did it by modifying the window size and/or delaying the acks. No
queueing. One might object "that won't work" but in fact it did.

On Thu, Aug 26, 2021 at 3:18 PM Jack Haverty via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> 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/
> >
>
>
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