Re: Napster and others...

["Peter Galbavy" <peter.galbavy () knowledge com>]

Michael wrote:
> Sean wrote:
> > 2. Although RFC 1349 is supposedly dead and the TOS octet in the
> >    RFC 791 scheme is dead too[*], it is at least good politics to
> >    set a low TOS value on the bulk transfer traffic.  (If not on all
traffic).
> >    Thus, routers configured to do TOS-based fancy queueing will DTRT and
> >    fewer people will accuse Napster of being a resource pig.
>
> I believe there was some discussion about doing that, actually, although
> I don't know where it went (as I just do system admin stuff, not
development
> stuff).  I'll have to inquire as I haven't heard anything about it
recently.
> Of course, the real impact would be pretty limited since I don't know that
> most peoples' routers really look to that header for QoS.  Nevertheless...

I think while the technology is not anywhere near perfect (hence the
deprecation in most environments of ToS), if you label your traffic as bulk,
then at least those who are interested can have the opportunity to
prioritise based on ToS. Most will not do this, but you will gain the
respect (to whatever degree) of those that do, by acknowledging that you are
concerned about the resources of others.

Think of it more as a politcial rather than operational acknowledgement.

Peter