[ih] booting linux on a 4004

[Lixia Zhang]

Hi Michael,

A very long time no "see"! (a few decades now?)
I'm not on this internet-history list, Len forwarded the following msg to me. Just to add a bit fact: I started at MIT September 1981, the same month of RFC 791-793 publication (IP/ICMP/TCP specifications). I still recall that Dave (Clark) handed me a printed copy and said "these are hot off the press, you read them".

In my early years, after I deciphered Noel's C-Gateway implementation, I did look into using IP source quench for congestion control (I guess that's why the mentioning in the report Brian pointed to). I can't recall I got any simulation results, but do remember the problem I ran into: IP forwarding was stateless, a gateway either had to send ICMP source quench for every dropped IP packet, or otherwise maintain some state...

The "alternative which seems considerably more workable" might be referring to an idea for having the sending host pace out packets, and I recall Van claimed at the time that rate-based control "simply wont work" 
(now BBR does exactly that, calculating packet pacing rate:-)

Lixia

> From: Michael Greenwald via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org>
> Subject: Re: [ih] booting linux on a 4004
> Date: October 1, 2024 at 3:53:31 PM PDT
> To: Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com>, internet-history at elists.isoc.org
> Cc: Michael Greenwald <michaelgreenwald58 at gmail.com>, "greenwald at cs.stanford.edu" <greenwald at cs.stanford.edu>
> Reply-To: greenwald at cis.upenn.edu
> 
> It wasn't Lixia (I believe it predated her arrival at MIT).
> It wasn't John Nagle, who wasn't (to my knowledge) at MIT at the time.
> As I said it had little impact, and is primarily of historical interest. But we can ask Dave Clark if anyone cares.
> 
> On 10/1/24 3:22 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>> On 02-Oct-24 10:19, Michael Greenwald via Internet-history wrote:
>>> 
>>> On 10/1/24 1:11 PM, Greg Skinner via Internet-history wrote:
>>>> Forwarded for Barbara
>>>> 
>>>> ====
>>>> 
>>>> From: Barbara Denny <b_a_denny at yahoo.com>
>>>> Sent: Tuesday, October 1, 2024 at 10:26:16 AM PDT
>>>> I think congestion issues were discussed because I remember an ICMP message type called source quench (now deprecated). It was used for notifying a host to reduce the traffic load to a destination.  I don't remember hearing about any actual congestion experiments using this message type.
>>> Of only academic interest: I believe that, circa 1980 +/- 1-2 years, an
>>> advisee of either Dave Clark or Jerry Saltzer, wrote an undergraduate
>>> thesis about the use of Source Quench for congestion control. I believe
>>> it included some experiments (maybe all artificial, or only through
>>> simulation).
>>> I don't think it had much impact on the rest of the world.
>> 
>> Source quench is discussed in detail in John Nagle's RFC 896 (dated 1984).
>> A trail of breadcrumbs tells me that he has an MSCS from Stanford, so
>> I guess he probably wasn't an MIT undergrad.
>> 
>> Source quench was effectively deprecated by RFC 1812 (dated 1995). People
>> had played around with ideas (e.g. RFC 1016) but it seems that basically
>> it was no use.
>> 
>> A bit more Google found this, however:
>> 
>> "4.3. Internet Congestion Control
>> Lixia Zhang began a study of network resource allocation techniques suitable for
>> the DARPA Internet. The Internet currently has a simple technique for resource
>> allocation, called "Source Quench."
>> Simple simulations have shown that this technique is not effective, and this work
>> has produced an alternative which seems considerably more workable. Simulation
>> of this new technique is now being performed."
>> 
>> [MIT LCS Progress Report to DARPA, July 1983 - June 1984, AD-A158299,
>> https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA158299.pdf ]
>> 
>> Lixia was then a grad student under Dave Clark. Of course she's at UCLA now. If she isn't on this list, she should be!
>> 
>>    Brian Carpenter
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