Adrian,
I share your concerns and frustration regarding errors. I will work on the
FEC section of the standard mechanisms draft to emphasize that FEC is not a
cure-all.
Some of your concern may stem from a misunderstanding of the purpose of the
draft. There are two drafts, one that addresses using standard TCP
mechanisms as they exist today. The second draft is for the identification
of protocol changes that are potentially promising but require further
investigation in order to be well understood.
Unfortunately, we are stuck today with the fact that the basic assumption
in TCP is that all errors are due to congestion. To best use TCP the way
it stands, it is important to have as error-free a channel as possible.
This is what the standard mechanisms draft tries to point out (and I will
try to do a better job on that section). I wholeheartedly agree with you
that we should address these concerns, and we plan to do so in the research
draft.
The hope is that there is research that can address the error problem in
future TCP mechanisms or versions. There are sections in the research
draft that are meant to address these issues and we have been actively
soliciting contributions to the draft. I hope that you or Eric can help.
R/
Dan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 14 2000 - 16:14:37 EST