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We’ve now been running packet-switched networks for many decades, and these days it’s packets and not virtual circuits lie behind most of the world’s digital communications service. But some very fundamental questions remain unanswered in this packet-switched world. Perhaps the most basic question is: “How big should a packet be?”…
The IEPG meets each Sunday at the start of the IETF week. The intended theme of these meetings is essentially one of operational relevance in some form or fashion – although the chairs will readily admit that they will run with an agenda of whatever is on offer at the…
During the recent IETF meeting it was pointed out to me that we got it all wrong when we called the end-to-end transport flow control algorithms “congestion control,” as this was a term with negative connotations about the network and the quality of the user experience. If we had called…
This article resulted from a request by The Internet Protocol Journal (IPJ), which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in June 2023. Another version of this article will appear in the June edition of IPJ. The Internet not quite as young and spritely as you might’ve thought. Apple’s iPhone, released in…
There is a common view out there that the QUIC transport protocol (RFC 9000) is just another refinement to the original TCP transport protocol [1] [2]. I find it hard to agree with this sentiment, and for me QUIC represents a significant shift in the set of transport capabilities available…
One of the discussion topics at the recent ICANN 75 meeting was an old favourite of mine, namely the topic of Internet Fragmentation. Here, I’d like to explore this topic in a little more detail and look behind the kneejerk response of declaiming fragmentation as bad under any and all…
A couple of months ago, in July 2022, I wrote about our work in measuring the level of use of QUIC in the Internet (https://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2022-07/quic.html). Getting this measurement “right” has been an interesting exercise, and it’s been a learning experience that I’d like to relate here. We’ll start from the…
Quick UDP Internet Connection (QUIC) is a network protocol initially developed and deployed by Google, and recently (May 2021) standardized in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) (RFC 9000). In this article we’ll take a quick tour of QUIC and then look at the extent to which QUIC is being…
Once you head away from the areas that are serviced by modern terrestrial cable infrastructure, the available digital communications options are somewhat limited. Some remote areas are served using High Frequency radio systems, using radio signals that bounce off the ionosphere to provide a long distance, but limited bandwidth, service.…
When did the Internet begin? It all gets a bit hazy after so many years, but by the early 1970’s research work in packet switched networks was well underway and while it wasn’t running TCP at the time (the flag day when the ARPANET switched over to use TCP was…
