Questions about Internet Packet Losses

Tue Jan 14 04:24:46 UTC 1997

   I believe you're misinterpreting the numbers.  The raw data for those
   numbers (if they're the same ones I'm thinking of) 

I doubt it, it's relatively new data.  Like last Thursday.  ;-)

   indicate that 9% of the packets had a 512 byte *payload*.

I already subtracted off the 40 bytes for the headers.  I meant MSS.
You're correct, of course, that the percentage of packets at that size does
not directly reflect the percentage of hosts with that as an MSS.  However,
the spikes in the packet percentages are clearly due to hosts using that
MSS.  You would otherwise expect to see a "smooth" distribution across
packet sizes, which is not at ALL what's happening.

   One of my main findings is that independently-written (i.e.,
   non-BSD-derived) TCP's are much more likely to have serious performance
   and congestion problems.

Wow.  Imagine that.  ;-)

Tony