North American Network Operators Group
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Definition of Congestion

  • From: Sean Donelan
  • Date: Sun Jan 30 03:38:07 2000 
The spooks have been working overtime, the NSA spent $1.5 million dollars
this week recovering from a computer failure starting Monday.  It was restored
on Thursday, just about the time people started reporting strange problems
on the Internet.  Concidence?

But on a more serious note.  Alan used the word "congestion" in one of
his messages.  Congestion doesn't seem to have a very strict definition.
It covers everything from a multi-week service interruption, to a dropped
packet which triggers slow-start.

Should the Internet follow the nuclear and power industry and come up with
a set of standarized terms for different degrees of events: blackout, brownout,
flicker, etc.  Or follow the telecommunication industry which uses a single
word, congestion, for most problems.