should TCPs do MTU black hole detection?

Fri Nov 19 00:09:13 UTC 1999

On Thu, 18 Nov 1999, Vern Paxson wrote:

 | To help resolve this issue, I'm wondering whether the ISP community has a
 | clear preference for either yes-do-detection or no-we-want-the-problems-fixed.
 | Comments appreciated.
 | 

I think that most ISP's would prefer that problems were fixed.  However, we
also know this doesn't happen very often, unless provoked (by customers,
usually.)

Can you provide more detail as to what problems would be masked or
otherwise ignored if TCP implementations started to accomodate for the lack
of Path-MTU discovery ?

---
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.