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TCP Sucks

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Re: TCP Sucks

#21

Post by varjag »

klodolph wrote: post #13
mnd999 wrote: post #6

TCP pretty obviously doesn’t suck as it’s pretty much powered the internet for the last 30ish (maybe more) years. I’m sure it isn’t perfect for every purpose and maybe I can be improved but enough with the click bait.

Complaining about the article’s title is no substitute for replying to the article’s content. Writing a provocative title is how you get people to read your article. If you have an opinion to share, you shouldn’t try to disguise it as a drab technical report. The article makes sound points and the title makes sense. Compare “TCP Sucks” (easy to read—communicates, concisely, that this is an opinion piece, and what the…

There is an unwritten rule that it is allowed to comment on clickbait articles without reading them.

Re: TCP Sucks

#23

Post by stestagg »

varjag wrote: post #21
klodolph wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about the article’s title is no substitute for replying to the article’s content. Writing a provocative title is how you get people to read your article. If you have an opinion to share, you shouldn’t try to disguise it as a drab technical report. The article makes sound points and the title makes sense. Compare “TCP Sucks” (easy to read—communicates, concisely, that this is an opinion piece, and what the…

There is an unwritten rule that it is allowed to comment on clickbait articles without reading them.

There is a hitherto-unwritten rule that it is allowed to comment...

Re: TCP Sucks

#24

Post by the8472 »

klodolph wrote: post #15
lmilcin wrote: post #12

Let's start with the fact that TCP obviously has problems. People who wrote the protocol did not expect for it to live that long. At the time the life expectancy of any standard was pretty short. But... before you get too caught up with bashing... if I were you I would spend just a tiny bit trying to really understand why we are in this situation. It might be because it is "just enough" to build upon. You are free to…

Depends on what you mean by “traction”. You and I may sit at home with our gigabit internet connections and think that the limitations of TCP are a minor annoyance at best. However, at the internet factories, where internet is made, in large data centers spanning the globe, TCP’s flow control translates directly to poor utilization of expensive, high-bandwidth links between different data centers. The problem gets wo…

> in large data centers spanning the globe, TCP’s flow control translates directly to poor utilization of expensive, high-bandwidth links between different data centers.

For internal traffic they have the option to choose custom congestion controllers that don't care about being fair to Reno and can also tolerate a few packet losses. Linux has offered options here for a long time.

Re: TCP Sucks

#25

Post by swinglock »

hujun wrote: post #19
bestouff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly the state of the internet means that only TCP and UDP will be widely used for the foreseeable future. There are a quantity of old routers which just throw away protocols they don't know, and they don't know much. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_ossification

SCTP is deployed more widely than you think, all mobile network(3G/LTE/5G) use SCTP for varies signaling protocols like S1-MME

Yes but no. It is used in operator networks but that isn't on the Internet.

Re: TCP Sucks

#26

Post by [deleted] »

the8472 wrote: post #24
klodolph wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by “traction”. You and I may sit at home with our gigabit internet connections and think that the limitations of TCP are a minor annoyance at best. However, at the internet factories, where internet is made, in large data centers spanning the globe, TCP’s flow control translates directly to poor utilization of expensive, high-bandwidth links between different data centers. The problem gets wo…

> in large data centers spanning the globe, TCP’s flow control translates directly to poor utilization of expensive, high-bandwidth links between different data centers. For internal traffic they have the option to choose custom congestion controllers that don't care about being fair to Reno and can also tolerate a few packet losses. Linux has offered options here for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: TCP Sucks

#27

Post by wmf »

zests wrote: post #18

I am a networking novice but the fact that my networking book (TCP/IP illustrated) has one chapter on UDP and several on TCP speaks (literal) volumes. My entirely uninformed opinion is that if its possible to do everything TCP does over UDP we should do so just based on the fact that it is a simpler protocol. This means that broadly speaking I think the QUIC protocol is an improvement. (Whether or not its worth imple…

TCP/IP illustrated has one chapter on UDP and several on TCP

Because TCP does far more than UDP.

if it's possible to do everything TCP does over UDP we should do so just based on the fact that it is a simpler protocol

The complexity of TCP is mostly needed, so reimplementing the same complexity yourself on top of UDP doesn't really gain you anything. The overall result isn't simpler.

Re: TCP Sucks

#29

Post by klodolph »

lmilcin wrote: post #20
klodolph wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you mean by “traction”. You and I may sit at home with our gigabit internet connections and think that the limitations of TCP are a minor annoyance at best. However, at the internet factories, where internet is made, in large data centers spanning the globe, TCP’s flow control translates directly to poor utilization of expensive, high-bandwidth links between different data centers. The problem gets wo…

That, again, is static view. Game-theory view is that any organization that would like to push this would have to spend enormous amount of resources to reinvent almost anything that has anything to do with TCP. Remember, it is implemented in hardware in many different types of devices, stacks, applications, it permeates almost anything. The application I am working on right now which has lived for over a decade and w…

It sounds like you are evaluating the idea that protocol X will replace TCP, but I don’t think anyone is making that argument. Protocol X would be used alongside TCP, and you wouldn’t be able to use protocol X in all networks. This is already the world we live in.

Re: TCP Sucks

#30

Post by bullen »

These kind of articles are made by ignoramuses that don't understand that TCP is an edge protocol and those profit from ossification because it allows the backbone to evolve without everyone re-implementing everything over and over again at the edges!

Over-engineering and technical debt is a bi-product of: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair

On the backbone nothing uses TCP, not even IP. It's all BGP or other proprietary formats. Edit: I'm pretty sure the backbones with billions invested in fiber across oceans are not running vanilla IP from the 70s on their hardware/cables, don't you? Or if they do then it's case closed for anything else really, so any way you turn this.

Re-implementing delivery guarantee wont solve anything better ever, TCP and HTTP/1.1 are the final protocols for the human race in this universe, get over it and start building something useful on top of them instead.

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