Re: Increase tcp initial window

[Loganaden Velvindron <loganaden%wolfman.devio.us@localhost>]

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 08:42:12PM -0400, Greg Troxel wrote:
> 
>   From: draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-08.txt
> 
>   http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-08.txt
> 
>   This document proposes to raise the upper bound on TCP's initial
>      window (IW) to 10 segments (maximum 14600B). It is patterned after
>      and borrows heavily from RFC 3390 [RFC3390] and earlier work in this
>      area. Due to lingering concerns about possible side effects to other
>      flows sharing the same network bottleneck, some of the
>      recommendations are conditional on additional monitoring and
>      evaluation.
> 
> My memory is that this draft was quite controversial and has not
> achieved Proposed Standard status.
> 
> In general, the notion of allowing user tunability [1] of congestion
> control to do things which are not generally regarded as safe is a bit
> scary.
> 
> But I could be off about the IETF status of IW10.

It seems to be getting a lot of revisions. Other BSDs have also
implemented it.

> 
> [1] Yes, I get it that users can rebuild their kernels to do arbitrary
> things.  Partly this is about not helping people without adequate
> technical skill to violate internet norms, and partly it's about setting
> expectations.
Maybe we should try to do the some empirical measurements to see if it has
too many side effects.

What about putting this as a sysctl and document it properly as christos and
matt suggested ?