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From: torek@elf.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: IRC Net Bandwidth (was IRC and Security)
Message-ID: <11198@dog.ee.lbl.gov>
Date: 20 Mar 91 20:45:21 GMT
References: <5152:Mar1805:08:4291@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <703@seqp4.UUCP>
Reply-To: torek@elf.ee.lbl.gov (Chris Torek)
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley
Lines: 28
X-Local-Date: Wed, 20 Mar 91 12:45:21 PST

>brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>>But it's the packets that cost. A 2-byte packet costs almost as much as
>>a 500-byte packet.

In article <703@seqp4.UUCP> jdarcy@seqp4.ORG (Jeffrey D'Arcy) writes:
>Yeah, right.  On an Ethernet, you have ....

Two points are important here:

	Most wide-area links are not Ethernet (so you cannot calculate
	packet lengths using Ethernet particulars);

and:

	Much of the Internet within the continental USA (and probably
	also outside it, but I do not know) uses truly horrid IP
	forwarding implementations.  The NSS routers, for instance,
	have (or had; probably this has been fixed by now) such long
	code paths that they could not keep up with T1 (1.44 Mb/s)
	links.

The huge latency introduced by existing Internet routers really does make
small packets almost as expensive as large ones.

This is entirely curable (and in software, no less).
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Lawrence Berkeley Lab CSE/EE (+1 415 486 5427)
Berkeley, CA		Domain:	torek@ee.lbl.gov