nanog mailing list archives
Re: MTU of the Internet?
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra () scfn thpl lib fl us>
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 04:36:36 -0500
On Sat, Feb 07, 1998 at 11:52:02PM -0700, Marc Slemko wrote:
Yet even with this, there is a perceived value to multiple connections. Why is that? There are several reasons: - that is how it has been done, so we better keep doing it - can grab more bandwidth on congested links by using more flows. In real life, this is a significant factor, more so when you get to ISDN and higher speeds. It would probably be better for everyone if everyone stopped using multiple connections, but if some do and some don't, those that don't lose out. This advantage could be eliminated by various algorithms. - is not acceptable to have a bunch of small responses stuck behind one huge response. - if you are a proxy, this becomes even more critical. If you only use one connection to each origin server, if one client requests a huge document from that server, anyone else wanting to make requests to that server would have to wait for the transfer to finish.
And yet, and yet... Marc overlooks the most important reason why browsers make multiple connections: functionally, this gets the page _usable_ by the user (which is, after all the _point_ of the whole affair) more quickly. Given the current design environment of web pages, it is useful to have more than one image loading simultaneously, because some of those images are controls, not just pretty pictures, and if you can whip the small stuff up while the big stuff is still loading, that's a win. Everyone remember: the whole point is making the net usable for the users. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth jra () baylink com Member of the Technical Staff Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued The Suncoast Freenet "Two words: Darth Doogie." -- Jason Colby, Tampa Bay, Florida on alt.fan.heinlein +1 813 790 7592 Managing Editor, Top Of The Key sports e-zine ------------ http://www.totk.com
Current thread:
- HTML layout (was Re: MTU of the Internet?), (continued)
- HTML layout (was Re: MTU of the Internet?) Stephen Sprunk (Feb 08)
- Re: HTML layout (was Re: MTU of the Internet?) Patrick W. Gilmore (Feb 12)
- Message not available
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Jay R. Ashworth (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Marc Slemko (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Phil Howard (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Patrick McManus (Feb 09)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Phil Howard (Feb 09)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Marc Slemko (Feb 09)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Patrick McManus (Feb 09)
- HTTP proxy servers (was Re: MTU of the Internet?) Matt Ranney (Feb 12)
- Message not available
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Jay R. Ashworth (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Mike Hedlund (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Phil Howard (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Mike Hedlund (Feb 09)
- Message not available
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Jay R. Ashworth (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Dean Gaudet (Feb 08)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Henry Linneweh (Feb 06)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Paul A Vixie (Feb 06)
- Re: MTU of the Internet? Sean M. Doran (Feb 07)