"Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@research.att.com> wrote:
>
> But I suspect that a bigger problem is that once there's a demand for 
> memory to satisfy an interactive process, whether a new command or some 
> process that has just awakened, it looks like the new process has to 
> fight with the file-writing processes for the newly-freed memory.  I 
> suspect that the percentage of RAM allocated to file writes needs to 
> follow a strategy similar to TCP's congestion control -- when there are 
> competing requests, it needs to *seriously* cut back the percentage 
> allocatable to such needs -- say, an additive increase/multiplicative 
> decrease scheme, just like TCP uses.

That sounds like a familiar echo...   I made that suggestion about
two years ago, in:

	http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2002/06/21/0002.html
	http://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2002/06/21/0015.html

As I recall, the reception was cool as the approach is more involved
than many are prepared to explore.  I am still convinced that there
is a significant potential here for anyone with the time to conduct
the research.

/sjd