[comp.protocols.tcp-ip] Does BSD Know Packets?

raj@hpindwa.cup.hp.com (Rick Jones) (03/01/91)

A few toss-up questions:

Does anyone have data showing the 'hit rate' of pulling as much data
as possible into a retransmission? Put another way, how often does a
series of packets get lost vs a single packet? I think the
effectiveness is rather low, but am not sure.

This comes out of some 'deep-thought' I've been trying to do
concerning BSD's implementing the congestion control packet windows as
byte windows - presumeably because BSD does not have a concept of a
'packet rtxq' in favor of a 'bytes rtxq' (Does that change in 4.4?)

In another life ;-) I worked-on a system where there was a 'packet
rtxq', which would seem to more purely implement a packet congestion
window scheme (primarily because it knows how many 'packets' are out
there and doesn't estimate it using MSS's). The trade-off (which I
think was unconscious) was that there was no 'pulling-up' of data into
retransissions. If a 10 byte packet was lost, then a 10 byte packet
would be retransmitted. It also seems to have more frequently achieved
exponential growth in packet window, whereas BSD seems to effectively
get linear (one MSS per ACK packet - or does that change too?)

Hence my question as to the effectiveness of pulling-up data into rtxs.

There are other questions, but I'll float these first.

rick jones