Subject: Re: An alternative to TCP (part 1)

From: Bob Braden <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 17:05:07 GMT

*> From [email-masked] Tue Feb  6 20:18:29 2001
  *> X-URI: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/
  *> From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
  *> To: "Jun'an Gao" <[email-masked]>
  *> cc: [email-masked]
  *> Subject: Re: An alternative to TCP (part 1) 
  *> Date: Tue, 06 Feb 2001 22:46:02 -0500
  *> X-Loop: [email-masked]
  *> 
  *> I think it would be very difficult to replace TCP.  However, a new
  *> transport protocol that worked better than TCP in very high bandwidth / 
  *> low delay conditions might be very attractive for hosts and applications
  *> that were able to take advantage of it.
  *> 
Keith,

As I am sure you recall, the IETF held a BOF on "TCPng" some years
ago.  It went over exactly the same ground tilled Mr. Gao.  The BOF's
conclusion was that any gains would be marginal and would not justify
the trauma of change.

Bob Braden

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 14:06:49 -0500

Bob,

I think I attended that BOF, but if I recall correctly I came away from
it thinking that the group had based its conclusions on a fairly narrow
set of assumptions about the nature and use of that protocol; change
those assumptions slightly and it gets much more feasible. 

At any rate I don't see that this would have to be an entirely different
transport protocol; it could be implemented using TCP options.  If the
server didn't support them, it would degrade to ordinary TCP.

Keith