[BBLISA-announce] November meeting: Jim Gettys on Internet buffer bloat

[Adam Moskowitz]

Wedesday, November 14th

MIT E-51 Room 149

7:00 - Introductions and announcements
7:29 - Drawing fordoor prizes
7:30 - Formal presentation:

       Internet buffer bloat, by Jim Gettys (Bell Labs)

       VOIP and teleconferencing often perform much more poorly on today's
       Internet than the Internet of a decade ago, despite great gains in
       bandwidth. Lots of fiber, cheap memory, smart hardware, variability
       of wireless goodput, changes in web browser behaviour, changes in
       TCP implementations, and a focus on benchmarking Internet performance
       solely by bandwidth, and engineer's natural reluctance to drop packets
       have conspired to encourage papering over problems by adding buffers;
       each of which may introduce latency when filled.

       The mistaken quest to never drop packets has destroyed interactivity
       under load, and often results in actual higher packet loss, as TCP's
       congestion avoidance algorithms have been defeated by these buffers.
       The lessons of the "RED manifesto" of 1997 have been forgotten or
       never learned by a new generation of engineers.

       ( full description at http://www.bblisa.org/ )

Also, go to http://www.bblisa.org/ for directions, parking information,
a campus map, and other information about the presentation and BBLISA.