George,
: In a similar vein, can anybody comment on the likelyhood of a general release
: of code which has a larger initial windowsize in PC platforms? I've heard
: an interesting rumour to that effect here, which I'd love to see confirmed.
:
: This is in the context of non-tcpsat usage: simple changes which might improve
: end-to-end performance for small-object web transfers, and time to achieve
: full window state on the network in general.
OK, I'll admit that I'm shooting from the hip here but -
For any increase in the default initial congestion window of a connection
to have a performance impact (positive or negative), they'll need to be
enabled at a connection's data source.
For things like http traffic, this means that as long as web-servers have
an initial cwnd of 2 or more segments, then the client stack needs *no*
modification at all of its default parameters. Further, since most people
are sucking data from servers rather than sourcing it, there is no need
to tweak *this* parameter in most home (or office) PCs.
On the other-hand, this means that "J. D. User" needs every random
web-server to be configured with a larger than 1 initial cwnd. This
might happen, but it is going to be beyond the influence of individual
client machines.
Further, if someone is running a server where they need to be concerned
about performance (I-CWND increase is a performance tweak), then they
should be *expected* to do at least minimal performance tuning (including
setting the default I-CWND) or they should seriously consider paying a
commercial provider to host their web-site.
In any case, there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason for a vendor
to have the default I-CWND set to anything but one segment upon OS
install. A knob allowing change from the default of one segment should
be sufficient.
: I think the days when people would volountarily load an alternate WINSOCK.DLL
: like trumpet to get some outcome have gone. It has to come bundled on the CD
: and enabled by default, or auto-enabled when needed to be useful in a dumbed-
: down world...
I don't know, even the least technical of users have gotten *more* used
to (have come to expect the need to?) the need to reinstall the OS, or
apply even to service patches.
However, since it seems that the latest winsock specs allow for multiple
transport providers to coexist, it might be as simple as littering a
hard-disk with another TCP implementation at the same time that a driver
is being installed and auto-magically doing surgery on the system registry.
Actually, if all that is required is a registry tweaking, then the
situation gets even simpler (the install procedure for a new browser
can handle this for you).
I need to be somewhat optimistic about the possibility of dropping in
an alternative DLL for a new protocol stack since we're attempting to
do something very similar for use with Windows-NT. :o(
Regards,
Eric
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 14 2000 - 16:14:42 EST