Ungodly packet loss rates

Mon Oct 21 21:36:48 UTC 1996

On Mon, 21 Oct 1996 jbash at velvet.com wrote:

> A situation where I have to "shop around" for connectivity depending
> on what site I want to talk to that day is just plain unacceptable.

If you're like most people working off site, there are a few hosts that 
you need to keep long TCP sessions open to, and the rest of the net that 
gets random traffic.  

> It doesn't look to me as though the loss is being introduced at the
> NAPS. If you look at the trace, you'll see that significant loss
> starts to appear within Alternet, well after MAE-west. 

Traceroute is less useful a tool than you think in the face of congestive
loss.  Routers can and do selectively prioritize the queueing packets
based on their type, and if I were a network operator I would have no
hesitation about dropping traceroute or ping packets to low priority.

> If I did interactive work under these conditions on a regular basis, I'd
> have gone insane long ago.

No, you would have changed ISPs a long time ago, instead of whining to 
NANOG that the entire world is providing sub-standard service.

Ed