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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Napster and others...
| When you have limited bandwidth you need to ensure that it is used for | what it is purchased for (email access to network based resources etc) Napster traffic is principally bulk TCP transfers. Bulk TCP transfers are good for your network -- much better than lots of short TCP transfers (web "mice") because they are highly sensitive to network congestion. Moreover, where chronic congestion is a problem (i.e., your access line is full and dropping packets for long periods of time), bulk transfers back off much more quickly with a very gentle RED control law than do web mice or short SMTP sessions etc. So, having one's supplier apply RED on your access line, and you applying RED towards the supplier, is a cheap, simple, and bandwidth-effective way of making sure that Napster traffic can consume the entire line, but not in any way worsen the performance of short TCP sessions and the like, which are not as congestion-sensitive. I deliberately do not address intellectual property issues, nor issues of "I don't want my access line to be 100% used, even if the napster traffic behaves in a UNIX nice +20 fashion, because I pay for number of bytes moved per month". Sean. |