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From: Brian {Hamilton Kelly} <bhk@dsl.co.uk>
Newsgroups: demon.ip.support,demon.tech.unix,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Batch FTP and Web Pages
Date: Thu, 04 Jul 96 09:26:07 GMT
Organization: Dragonhill Systems Ltd
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <836472367snz@dsl.co.uk>
References: <31D4AA3A.BC0@www.play-hookey.com> <836073421snz@dsl.co.uk> <31D87436.7C7F@www.play-hookey.com> <836295557snz@dsl.co.uk> <4rcr6v$dh@anorak.coverform.lan>
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In article <4rcr6v$dh@anorak.coverform.lan>
brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk "Brian Somers" writes:
> Brian {Hamilton Kelly} (bhk@dsl.co.uk) wrote:
> : Another problem with web surfing is that Netscape took a cynical decision
> : to launch parallel multiple sessions which are playing absolute havoc
> : with the RTT timeout adjustment algorithms of most TCP/IP packages: it
> : has been said that this is the single most contributory factor to the
> : slowing down of the 'net in the past year, with fully 40% of packets
> : being needlessly duplicated.
>
> I find that difficult to believe. What do you mean by TCP/IP packages?
> Do you mean the machines on which netscape is running (such as maybe
> Windows & OS/2)? If this is the case, then the OS is broken. RTTs
> should be variable and should adjust according to connection throughput.
It is the implementation of the adaptive algorithm in the TCP/IP kermel
that is being confused by the multiple threads fired off by Netscape.
Amongst other places, this is mentioned in the apologia from the Solaris
TCP/IP developers who've been fixing the rather more broken problem with
their kernel.
Netscape actually fires off multiple requests *expecting* to discard the
results from some of them: as I said, it's quite cynical.
--
Brian {Hamilton Kelly} bhk@dsl.co.uk
"A language is a dialect that has an army and a navy"
-- Samuel Johnson