Re: MTU of the Internet?

[Phil Howard <phil () charon milepost com>]

Marc Slemko writes:

> Once again, HTTP/1.1 does _not_ allow multiplexing multiple transfers
> simlultaneously in a single TCP connection.  Multiple responses are
> serialized.

I think the confusion here is due to Paul's use of the term "serial
multiplexing" where he qualified it with "serial" to indicate that
one-at-a-time situation.  When I read it I wasn't sure if "serial"
meant to be that or meant to describe a kind of multiplexing over a
serial stream.  But given the HTTP 1.1 that I knew had a persistent
connection that allowed additional requests, I suspected that he was
referring to this.  But the term "multiplexing" by itself implies
concurrency.  While at the microsecond level it is one at a time,
but each channel isn't completed in those short durations.  My worry
was that others might have assumed there was some new true multiplexing
protocol for HTTP.  I've not heard of one, but even I wondered of one
I might have not heard of (and I don't keep track of all the protocols
out there).


> As I noted before, total transfer time for all the responses that make up
> one document in the client is not the metric that client vendors are
> trying to optomize and is not what most users care about.  

If it were, we'd probably see pages with all text, like the web once used
to be before it became commercialized.

-- 
Phil Howard | stop8894 () spammer5 edu end3it71 () dumbads8 net a4b2c0d5 () spammer3 com
  phil      | end0it89 () spammer5 net ads9suck () no5where net crash089 () lame5ads com
    at      | ads6suck () spam4mer com suck9it9 () spam4mer edu w2x8y4z4 () dumbads5 net
  milepost  | stop6231 () anywhere edu eat8this () no5place org die4spam () dumbads6 org
    dot     | w5x5y2z8 () anywhere com eat64me7 () no3place net end7it94 () spam7mer org
  com       | eat2this () anyplace edu ads7suck () nowhere0 edu crash309 () anywhere com