From: Simon Spero <ses@tipper.oit.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 11:05:02 +0800
To: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Subject: Re: Imminent Death of the Internet, GIF at 11
In-Reply-To: <199609091614.MAA24724@jekyll.piermont.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.960909175135.23624A-100000@tipper.oit.unc.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Remember, though - TCPs initial estimate of the congestion window is 
never less than one packet, large numbers of opening connections can 
still (I think) lead to congestion collapse. It can defnitely get close 
to it.

At one point, when sunsite was getting a few 100k hits a day with only 
one T1 there were times when around 2/3rds of all packets were 
re-transmitted. Jon Crowcroft observed similar problems at some UK links, 
though see Van's article on either ietf or end2end a month or so  back
with the counter argument.

Simon



On Mon, 9 Sep 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> 
> Martin Minow writes:
> > For several months (years?) Bob Metcalf has been predicting that
> > the Internet will self-destruct from overload. His argument
> > appears to follow one of Gordon Bell's maxims: "anyone can predict
> > the future: all you need is semi-log paper and a ruler." As I
> > understand it, Metcalf's argument is that network load (messages,
> > packets) is growing exponentially, while network bandwidth (fiber
> > capacity, switch performance) is growing linearly. At some point,
> > these two curves cross -- and demand will exceed capacity.
> 
> Except for the following.
> 
> 1) TCP backs off.
> 2) Capacity is growing exponentially.
> 
> Perry
> 
> 

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