'Selfish Routing' Slows the Internet

Smaz writes "Science Blog reports that a little love could speed things up on the Net. "Self-interest can deplete a common resource. It seems this also applies to the Internet and other computer networks, which are slowed by those who hurry the most. Fortunately, say computer scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. , there is a limit to how bad the slowdown can get. And after developing tools to measure how much the performance of a particular network suffers, they say, the way to get improved performance on the Internet is the same as the way to maintain air and water quality: altruism helps."

Comments

Jesus Michael...

[Anonymous Coward]

You suck ass.

Frist pist

ACs rule

Maybe you should show the same kind of love

[I VOMIT ON TODDLERS!]

for the internet as I do for my toddlers! They love that vomit!

3rd post!

[Anonymous Coward]

This thr0d ps1t is brought to you by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's Model Thr00 Thr0d Ps1t Generator.

Share and enjoy!

FIRST POST NIGS

[Anonymous Coward]

If there's anything the Internet has taught me...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got to rely on the goodwill of others to get by, you're totally screwed.

The phenomenon is dwarfed by...

[Qinopio]

another resource depleting mechanism known as "Slashdotting"

Sad news, Dolly the sheep dead at 6

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard the news on talk radio; Dolly the cloned sheep was found dead this morning in her Maine home. There weren't any details. There's no denying that even if you didn't agree with her creators ideology, she was a symbol for all of us. Truly an American icon.

Re:Sad news, Dolly the sheep dead at 6

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that she was BRITISH. From the people who brought you RADAR. Moron!

Re:Sad news, Dolly the sheep dead at 6

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more, she was SCOTTISH.

Re:Sad news, Dolly the sheep dead at 6

[Angry White Guy]

No, but at times she had some Scot in her...

fasdf

[Anonymous Coward]

sdfsdasdjfklsd dsafsdf

Light Precipitation

[KingDaveRa]

We're going to end up with 'wired weathermen' probably. Maybe even those little wooden boxes with a wind-speed measurer on them attached to every router in the world. :-)

Re:Light Precipitation

[peculiarmethod]

Already happens here [MIDS IWR, internetweather.com]

-former employee

pm

Waste of bandwidth ahoy.

[Anonymous Coward]

bc 1.06
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'.
scale=10000
43(7sqrt(1.93))
(standa rd_in) 2: parse error
(standard_in) 2: parse error
43(7^sqrt(1.93))
(standard_in) 3: parse error
43(7^(sqrt(1.93))
(standard_in) 4: parse error
(standard_in) 5: parse error
43(7^(sqrt(1.93)))
(standard_in) 5: parse error
43(7^(sqrt(1.93))))
(standard_in) 6: parse error
(standard_in) 6: parse error
43(7^(sqrt(1.93
(standard_in) 7: parse error
(standard_in) 8: parse error
43(7)
(standard_in) 8: parse error
43*sqrt(1.93)
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160

Michael is a TROLLING CUNT

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll Troll Troll your cunt

Gently down the stream!

merrily merrily merrily

Michael is a wet dream!

Re:Michael is a TROLLING CUNT

[Anonymous Coward]

michael blows just like a whore
hallujullliah
he blows and blows some more
hallejullluuuliah

Re:Michael is a TROLLING CUNT

[Anonymous Coward]

who is this michael?

Game Theory

[kmac06]

Game theory, anyone?

Re:Game Theory

[AssFace]

exactly - doesn't this just scream "Nash"?

maybe that is me... maybe I'm sitting here screaming it.

Re:Game Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't scream it so much as mention and describe Nash flow equilibrium and Braess in the article. Which you'd have known if you'd RTF thing. Assface.

Re:Game Theory

[AssFace]

mom?

Are we sure...

[creative_name]

...that this isn't the guys at Cornell just trying to capture more bandwidth for themselves? Seems like a good idea to me.

Me: Don't use as much bandwidth and everyone will go faster!
World: Hey! That seems like a good idea.
Me: (aside) Mwuhahahaha

Re:Are we sure...

[ZeldorBlat]

I'd say we have plenty of bandwidth here (Cornell). I believe it's an OC-3, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, this woman (Eva Tardos) was one of my professors for an algorithms course (CS 482). She definitely liked to talk about this stuff in lecture...

Needless to say, I didn't think she was a very good teacher.

Re:Are we sure...

[Wampus Aurelius]

Me: Don't use as much bandwidth and everyone will go faster!
World: Hey! That seems like a good idea.
Me: (aside) Mwuhahahaha

You: Profit!

Re:Are we sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I can see how someone trying to teach you the course material and related theorems in a fourth-year course would be offputting. But don't worry, I'm sure she thought you were a very good CS student, even if you were never quite sure what sort of connection you were using, let alone your effect on it.

Re:Are we sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha. Cornell's upstream provider is FastNot. No matter how much bandwidth they had, it'd still be just as slow.

Re:Are we sure...

[ZeldorBlat]

Unfortunately, not one part of that course involved any work on an actual computer. Just for fun you should check out the homework assignments posted on the website. There were many times when my solution to a problem looked someting like this:

Suppose there is an optimal solution O. Then my algorithm is as follows:

opt(n) {
return O;
}

Proof of correctness: O is the optimal solution, opt(n) returns O, so opt(n) must return the optimal solution.

Running time analysis: Since opt(n) only does one thing (returns O) then it must have a O(1) time requirement.

Research networks

[Florian Weimer]

Reasearch networks are particular well at this sports: For example, the German Research Network (DFN) has a strict anti-peering policy. GÉANT, a European research network, appears to accepts only links to a single research network operator in each member country.

Of course, the most important aspect of such networks is that the bandwidth they offer is helpful in Dick Size Wars at supercomputing conferences, so it's not a terribly loss for the Internet at large.

Re:Research networks

[Anonymous Coward]

GÉANT, a European research network, appears to accepts only links to a single research network operator in each member country.

This is just because GÉANT has a charging model which is based on access port capacity (i.e. peering points and speed); being a non-for-profit organization it does make sense to cover the GÉANT costs by charging national research networks according to their interconnection speed.

For more detail, see http://www.dante.net

Other than this, the article was a pile of flaming bullshit apparently written by somebody who hasn't got any clue whatsoever on routing, traffic engineering or mpls.

Credit where credit is due.

I'm confused

[hackwrench]

Somehow the only conclusion I could draw from the article is that using the network slows it down. Right, so could somebody explain what the article is trying to say?

Re:I'm confused

[smack_attack]

Right, so could somebody explain what the article is trying to say?

Share all your bandwidth and hope that everyone is as altruistic as you. What a moron.

Re:I'm confused

[stratjakt]

I think its more like the guys running the routers monkeying with the QOS levels to make sure they get a certain chunk of bandwidth, rather than take a kick in the nuts like everyone else.

I read it as sort of a digital version of 'communism only works on paper'.

Re:I'm confused

[PetWolverine]

How does this get modded insightful?

The article is not saying that using the Internet slows it down (that much is obvious). It's saying that with different routing techniques and the same level of use, it could go faster. So, using it slows it down, but so does building a bad infrastructure for it.

Re:I'm confused

[hackwrench]

But there's no justification of why different routing techniques would make it go faster, nor does it say what those different routing techniques would be.

Re:I'm confused

[Randolpho]

The author is not trying to say "those bastards over at network X are selfish and they're slowing us down" or anything like that. He's trying to point out that a fundamental aspect of internet routing, the concept of forwarding a packet via the fastest route to the destination, can in many cases slow down performance if the fastest route gets congested.

Frankly, I'm surprised this is considered news; I learned it in a networking course on my way to a CS degree. I can only assume that the author is trying to push a new algorithm for congestion control and is using "selfish routing" as a marketing scheme. The thing is, I can't seem to find the suggested reprieve.

Ahh, here it is:

Roughgarden has a suggestion that wouldn't be expensive to implement. Before deciding which way to send information, he says, routers should consider not only which route seems the least congested, but also should take into account the effect that adding its own new messages will have on the route it has chosen. That would be, he says, "just a bit altruistic" in that some routers would end up choosing routes that were not necessarily the fastest, but the average time for all users would decrease.

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

as far as i understand, it baisicly says that routers normally send each packet the fastest way possible, through link A. however this is bad, as it slows down link A for everyone else. so, isntead, routers should use conections that aren't possibly the fastest, like link B.

i really dont get how that is supposed to speed up the internet though. as far as i understand, when one router choose route B, hell just slow that one down. true now A is faster, but as soon as somebody takes advantage of it, itll slow down again.
the example that is used is trafic lanes. so using that example, link A is a highway, and link B is the much slower street. now, when everybody uses A, there will be a too much trafic, and taking route B is faster. what i dont understand is why that is a problem. as soon as A is full, people start using B, thereby reducing load on A. then, A will start to speed up, people use A, and eventually there should be an equilibrium with the load balanced between A and B.
in the roads example, there might be some problems because people dont know which route to take until they actually get there, but that shouldn't be a problem for routers, should it?

Re:I'm confused

[Rocko Bonaparte]

Well yeah, use a network, and it slows down. The complication with the Internet, is that it's a network of networks. And you might have a favorite (fast) network, but that's also everybody else's favorite. By thrashing that fast network into the ground, the whole network suffers.

At least that's what the article makes it sound like. I imagine it's something like traffic here in Austin, TX. Everybody's morbidly fascinated with using I35 to get everywhere. It's probably because there's a > 50% of having to stop at any given light (as I've calculated). The problem is, with everybody getting on I35, those slower roads go unused, while I35 jams right up. In the end, it takes EVERYBODY longer to get wherever.

What I don't understand is how routers don't seem to consider alternatives as much as I would have thought. The article implies routers have tunnel vision when it comes to picking choices to destinations. I thought they adapted to traffic burdens, but I guess I'm wrong.

Re:I'm confused

[zackbar]

I'm confused too.

The article states that computers test the routes, and pick the least congested route to use. Thus, it slows everything down for everyone.

What should it do? Pick the MOST congested route?

Either I'm just confused, the author didn't understand the situation correctly, or the whole thing is BS.

Re:I'm confused

[Randolpho]

What I don't understand is how routers don't seem to consider alternatives as much as I would have thought. The article implies routers have tunnel vision when it comes to picking choices to destinations. I thought they adapted to traffic burdens, but I guess I'm wrong.

Actually, routers do consider alternatives. This sort of congestion has been a problem with the Internet since day one. This guy is just pushing a new way of doing things, is all.

Re:I'm confused

[mrcparker]

Forgive me if I am wrong - it has been awhile - but isn't this the problem that TCP addresses with its 'windows'? It sends out an extra packet for each ACK it gets back, and pulls back at any sign of congestion.

Re:I'm confused

[sbillard]

Consider the popular analogy of highway traffic.

The flow is slow, but steady, and your crusing along at ~25mph during rush hour. You pass an on-ramp with no cars entering the expressway. The same number of packets are still on the wire. Some of the cars in the right lane behind you make use of the "new" right lane (aka the end of the on-ramp) and pass you on the right. They will eventually merge back into bumper-to-bumper traffic becuase of the encroaching guard rail. Everybody slows down as a result. A few greedy motorist, by their actions, slow everybody down because of the artifical bottleneck they have created. There aren't any more cars on the road (packets on the wire), but the route they have chosen proved detrimental to the whole system.

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

How does this get modded insightful?

You must be new here.

Re:I'm confused

[Zeinfeld]

Frankly, I'm surprised this is considered news; I learned it in a networking course on my way to a CS degree. I can only assume that the author is trying to push a new algorithm for congestion control and is using "selfish routing" as a marketing scheme.

Yep, if you have three available routes A, B, C with bandwidths 10, 4 and 1 the selfish router would send all trafic through route A in every case. An altruistic router would make a random choice between A, B, C such that A was chosen 2/3rds of the time and B, C were chosen in proportion 4:1 the rest of the time.

You can then tweak further by using traffic information. If the system is unloaded then use A all the time.

The same observation applies to the problem where traffic alternates between two routes rather than dividing itself evenly. That is elementary control theory. The problem is that the response has too high a gain factor, in effect the gain factor is infinite so instead of being shared across the routes the system is going into oscillation.

There is an obvious solution to that problem, you measure the change in the traffic statistics and moderate your response to changes.

This is the sort of thing the IETF should be doing. Unfortunately the IETF has been out to lunch for many years now. They have failled to respond with any urgency to most of the issues facing the net. Most of the participants seem to use it as a substitute social life rather than as a place to get things done.

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh...it's actually a digital version of "laissez-faire capitalism only works on paper - but a little centralised communism helps". Maybe you should reread the article.

(I don't really give a rats ass about the political analogy - but that is what the article is about - the individual pursuit of "selfish" routing strategies is shortsighted and results in nonoptimal performance for every individual on the network.)

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

It's saying that simply reacting to the current congestion doesn't work very optimally, and a more proactive strategy is better. You have to think beyond the idea that each router should simply look at the current state of affairs. The idea is that a smarter router could anticipate what the future network will look like after it (and its peers) make their next decision. It's a bit like a chess computer (in fact, it's game theory).

But you're right, if you don't immediately understand something it probably does mean the author is full of it and just blowing their own horn. After all, it would never play on MTV!

Re:I'm confused

[obnoximoron]

The same observation applies to the problem where traffic alternates between two routes rather than dividing itself evenly. That is elementary control theory. The problem is that the response has too high a gain factor, in effect the gain factor is infinite so instead of being shared across the routes the system is going into oscillation.

The control theory you refer to is for linear systems with feedback. Routing is a highly nonlinear system and the analysis is much harder. However the basic concept of high gain leading to oscillation is the roughly the same. Multicommodity flow theory researchers have been working on flow allocation and stability for years. Recently this work has caught the attention of the MPLS crowd in IETF.

You are right about IETF inertia though. I have given up on any bold progressive thinking in IETF for now with their attitudes such as "If it basically works, why fix it?"

Re:I'm confused

[MoreDruid]

And you were going for +5 Funny, right?

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

The point the article is trying to make is that in today's strongly-connected internet, where there are many paths between every destination, the hard "shortest path first" approach does not work so well anymore.

Pity researchers and vendors (e.g. Cisco and Juniper)already noticed this years ago, first deploying ATM overlay networks and now using MPLS traffic engineering to use all potential paths at their best.

Pity the article authors did not bother to check..

Re:I'm confused

[drinkypoo]

You're confused. The problem comes when a computer picks a route that looks like it is the most congested route based on the usual metrics.

As you doubtless know, you can't simply say "This link will carry this much traffic and it is currently carrying this much so I should start sending traffic down this other link." While that can be a useful rule to apply to one's fair queueing system it is hardly complete. One usually tests for link saturation not only by measuring packet flow but also by observation of responses to pings and similar traffic (obviously ping itself is no metric at all (by itself) because various routers along the way may be heavily loaded and prioritizing other traffic higher) and thus you get a certain view of the network which is fairly useful for sending traffic where it needs to go.

However no matter what you do you to a link, unless it has multiple channels you can only send one piece of information down the pipe at a time. The higher-speed the link is the less this matters, of course, but it is still an issue; When a link is heavily loaded, low-bandwidth traffic might not suffer a decrease in throughput, but latency often increases.

One relatively simple technique to increase the quality of the internet experience by making it more responsive would be to send traffic which does not require a low-latency link (most especially file transfers, I'm mostly talking P2P here which is where probably a majority of bandwidth is going now, though I've done no research) over a fairly highly loaded link which nonetheless has enough free bandwidth to carry the traffic. Packets might sit in queue longer, but what's four or five seconds lag when you're talking about a file transfer that takes at least minutes and sometimes days?

Meanwhile traditionally interactive traffic like a shell (via ssh or telnet or what have you) or a game might not take up that much bandwidth but it's more important that it be transferred over low-latency links. 50ms makes the difference between natural reactions and missing everyone in many first person shooters, for example.

Re:I'm confused

[Zeinfeld]

The control theory you refer to is for linear systems with feedback. Routing is a highly nonlinear system and the analysis is much harder. However the basic concept of high gain leading to oscillation is the roughly the same. Multicommodity flow theory researchers have been working on flow allocation and stability for years. Recently this work has caught the attention of the MPLS crowd in IETF.

Actually it is even easier to send the system into oscillation if you have a non-linear system. But explaining the ins and outs in a slashdot post...

The frustrating thing is that an organization led by academics has so little academic input. The only academic habit they observe is lethargy.

You are right about IETF inertia though. I have given up on any bold progressive thinking in IETF for now with their attitudes such as "If it basically works, why fix it?"

The IETF attitude is to resist ideas as long as they can, then when someone loses patience and goes ahead without them complain about commercial interests having no respect for the standards process. In fact there is plenty of respect for standards processes, but not much for the specific IETF process.

You can tell how backward the institution is simply by looking at an RFC, they look like a Nigerian letter asking for assistance with a money transfer.

The whole NOMCOM system is a sick joke. The obvious purpose of the mechanism is to make sure that the IAB and IESG are accountable to no-one. A cabal of 15 people meeting in secret with no basic accountability is much less likely to upset the status quo with a dramatic move than a democratic system of elections. Democratic elections would mean a real risk of a change of power. The NOMCOM system means that bad ADs and ADs who have blatantly abused their power can continue to be reappointed, there is no way for the membership as a whole to reject them.

If the IETF had balls they would have pushed through a program for completion of the IPSEC, DNSEC and IPV6 protocols five years ago and then moved ahead with a strategy for deployment. Today they would be aggressively considering how to address the problem of Spam. As it is DNSSEC is undeployable in the large zones, the IESG has been content to let the WG chair filibuster fixes. IPSEC is a mess, the ISAKMP/IKE scheme is a dogs breakfast, a scheme to negotiate the scheme for negotiation. The only thing that has happened to IPv6 is that we are closer to running out of address space and everyone is moving to NAT regardless of the IETF opinion of them.

At the same time groups like OASIS have been completing standards in 18 months...

Re:I'm confused

[arodland]

That wouldn't be altruistic, that would be more selfish -- because it's smarter.

The problem the article describes isn't one of selfishness, but of stupidity. The optimum solution is for everyone (aka each router) to be selfish _and_ smart.

Re:I'm confused

[sjames]

The article states that computers test the routes, and pick the least congested route to use. Thus, it slows everything down for everyone.

Really, the article is calling for routers to make better choices.

Most routers don't make a packet by packet decision, that would burn too much CPU, and the information may not be there without excessive active probes (making the problem worse).

Least congested route is more of a first approximation of the optimal route. The first problem is that a router chooses the least congested route, then promptly doubles or triples it's congestion. The second problem is similer to collision avoidance in Ethernet (or rather what would happen without collision avoidance). Consider when 5 routers see that route A is the least congested, then all cram their traffic into the pipe, making it the most congested. They then see the congestion, and all promptly choose route B (and so manage to NOT avoid the congestion).

It's not really so much a matter of altruistic routing as it is enlightened routing. Making the routing decision WITH the knowledge that everyone will be making the same sort of decision.

As I think about it, random backoff in routing decisions (much like enet collision avoidance) might do the job.

Re:I'm confused

[Randolpho]

Yes, exactly right. But TCP is one level higher in the networking scheme than routers are, which is why the author is pushing his new algorithm in my opinion -- an additional form of congestion control.

Re:I'm confused

[zackbar]

What I guess I didn't understand is that the router sends all it's traffic along one route.

I had the idea that each router knows the destination of a packet and just sends it along the least congested route, regardless of the other packets from the same source.

From what I've been reading here, the first router picks the route for all the traffic from my system, and doesn't change the route unless something fails.

Re:I'm confused

[sjames]

That's somewhat the case. It WILL choose a route appropriate to your outbound traffic's destination. Consider the case where 3 reasonable routs exist for your packet out of, say, 6 potential routs, it will choose the best of the three based on it's most recent evaluation. The problem is it can't evaluate on a packet by packet basis so it may choose a route based on outdated information. At the same time that's going on, it may be sending other packets from you (going to different addresses) out different routs.

All of this is mostly an issue for core routers. Lower level routers often have a much simpler decision (due to only having 2 or 3 outbound connections)

Without Faith

[Anonymous Coward]

I am nothing. ...and still you swear upon your heart that you can taste the wind and hear the ground beneath you but you still refuse to see.

Thanks, editor...

[davie]

Thanks, editor, for unnecessarily turning this discussion into an Objectivists vs. The Usual Crowd debate. Please save the commentary for the OpEd page and let the reader draw his own wrong conclusions.

Thank you.

Re:Thanks, editor...

[Anonymous Coward]

On Slashdot, the Objectivists are the usual crowd!

Thanks Ron Howard

[scotay]

Eventually the system will settle to an equilibrium that mathematicians call a Nash flow, which will be, on the average, slower than the ideal.

If nobody goes for the blond, we all get laid. Somebody go tell the routers.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[PetWolverine]

And just as in A Beautiful Mind Nash's friends suspected him of coming up with a plan that would allow him to get the blonde, people will suspect Cornell of coming up with this plan to get more bandwidth. Also just as in the movie (/book, which I haven't read yet) that's probably not the case...or let's hope it's not.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[Coolfish]

the movie is glamorized hollywood trash. nash in his earlier days was (and he'll deny this but..) gay. he wasn't at all interested in women. later he had to, cuz that's what guys did. the guy was a big closet case, imo still is, and that didn't help his psychophrenia (sp). read the book, come to your own conclusions.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[Xzzy]

> (/book, which I haven't read yet)

It's been over a year and it was a long, long book (but well worth the read), but I don't recall the "blonde strategy" ever being in those pages. The blunt "let's just go have sex" scene was in there however. :p

I'd attribute it to dressing up the screenplay.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[Anonymous Coward]

If nobody goes for the blond, we all get laid. Somebody go tell the routers.

Funny theory. I though it was more likely, "if everybody goes for the blond, we all get laid". Seems to work. Even with only one blonde.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[Fizgig]

As someone who's into game theory, that part of the movie annoyed me. No one going for the blonde is NOT a Nash equilibrium. It's very far from it. If you know everyone is going for the brunnette, your best strategy is to go for the blonde. By definition, that's not a Nash equilibrium.

The correct Nash equilibrium for that situation is for each person to randomly choose between their own assigned brunette or the blonde (the probability they choose depends on the relative worth of getting the blonde over the brunnette).

And it just made me sad that no one got the blonde.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[JoeBuck]

As has been pointed out, the movie got the Nash equilibrium principle entirely wrong. Since a cheater can benefit by going for the blonde at the last minute, after the other guys have already committed themselves, it's not an equilibrium.

Re:Thanks Ron Howard

[abulafia]

I have 60 GB or so of MP3s [dhs.org] that you need.

Funny you should be posting to an article on selfish routing....

Another article

[aengblom]

Cnet's got a write up on this too.

Shhh!

[LionKimbro]

Not the "A" word!

Not here, on Slashdot!

Could the bloody writer be specific

[jj_johny]

Attention Science Blog - We have things called protocols and such. Please use specific terms.

Maybe I am just a lowly CCNP but is this all just a theory paper about the problems with "routing" or were there specifics about current routing protocols that should be updated or current practices that should be changed. Please help, everyone knows that the current routing could be better but theory stuff just does not help us much.

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[Anonymous Coward]

If you knew your stuff you would never call yourself a CCNP. Heck, I have one too, but I don't admit it in public.

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[orthogonal]

Maybe I am just a lowly CCNP

No, it's no longer "CCNP"; the Soviet Socialists are now calling themselves the nationlists, the Union is gone, and the country's just named Russia.

But thanks, "Comrade". We'll open a dossier on you anyway.

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the state of Russia is still just one member of the Russian Federation. The Federation was of course just one Soviet in the Union.

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[SquadBoy]

Yes it was a very light article but if you had followed the links, well not so much links as URLs, you would have found this. http://www.cs.cornell.edu/timr/ and this http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/eva/eva.html

Which although I have not even starte to read it yet appears to have more than enough detail to satisfy almost anyone. Have fun I know I will. :)

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[ninewands]

It's not so much a theory piece as it is a GROSS misunderstanding, on the author's part, of the design principles behind the internet in the first place.

The internet isn't, wasn't, never has been intended to be a high-performance network. It IS and was intended to be a high-availability network (read ... capable of suvivng a nuclear attack) ...

One of the ways the 'net accomplishes this is by detecting damage and routing around it by trying to always use the "lowest cost" route from point A to point B. A significant factor in "lowest cost" is least time.

By always seeking to use the fastest (or most efficient by some other measure than time) route from point A to point B, performance levels on the 'net get leveled out and really fat pipes draw lots of traffic, while "pin-holes" don't.

For the life of me I can't understand just what the hell the author's complaint is ... it reads, to me, that he's complaining because the defined routing protocols work THE WAY THEY"RE SUPPOSED TO. Well, DUHH!

Just my US$0.02

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[Zak3056]

No, it's no longer "CCNP"; the Soviet Socialists are now calling themselves the nationlists, the Union is gone, and the country's just named Russia.

In Soviet Russia.... ahh, forget it, it's too easy.

Re:Could the bloody writer be specific

[Firethorn]

really fat pipes draw lots of traffic, while "pin-holes" don't.

But that's central to the article. By sending some traffic over the 'pinholes', you'd reduce traffic on the fat pipes a bit, resulting in an average increase in bandwidth/latency, due to better utilization of available lines. With a protocol like IGRP (which can take into account bandwidth, latency, utilization, cost, hop count), you can do alot of tweaking, but by default they only 'load balance' if the index for the lines is about the same. (It won't route over a modem link if it has a T-1 that can reach the same spot unless the admin has REALLY been tinkering with the weighing of the factors).

The whole problem I had with the article is that routers have a tough enough time already, it takes compution power to use a more complex routing system. So called 'selfish' routing is cheaper on CPU time...

Please send this article to

[teamhasnoi]

defaultuser@kaazalite.com

'Cool! One meg left! .......huh? WTF?!!? Disconnected?! You dirty SOB!..FUUuuuuuuuccCCCKKK!'

Re:Please send this article to

[bninja_penguin]

Funny, Funny, Funny!!

Re:Please send this article to

[Xerithane]

Please send this article to defaultuser@kaazalite.com

Don't worry, I read it. But I'm still not changing.

Although I had a sad revelation last night, after saying to a friend "Yeah, hopefully when I get back from work tomorrow night those music videos will be finished." I then realized the interest of my Friday night is determined by whether or not my Utada Hikaru MTV Unplugged (JP) videos will be completed.

I then realized I must get out more. Good thing my girlfriend gets back on Thursday...

Re:Please send this article to

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing my girlfriend gets back on Thursday...

You should invest in a puncture repair kit.

hahaha!

[Joe the Lesser]

Foolish peons! Your bandwidth is mine!

Is altruism still possible on the Internet, tho?

[juanfe]

Given the growth of walled gardens, of email attacks, of DoS, of more traffic channeled through fewer fat pipes owned by fewer public/non-profit organizations, is this still possible?

selfish trolling slows the clit drones.

[Anonymous Coward]

three hundred seventeen octingentquintrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentquattuortrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three octingenttretrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentdotrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentuntrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen octingenttrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentnovemvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three octingentoctovigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentseptenvigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentsexvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen octingentquinvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentquattuorvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three octingenttrevigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentdovigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentunvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen octingentvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentnovemdecillion,
one hundred seventy three octingentoctodecillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentseptendecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentsexdecillion,
three hundred seventeen octingentquindecillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentquattuordecillion,
one hundred seventy three octingenttredecillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentdodecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentundecillion,
three hundred seventeen octingentdecillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentnovemtillion,
one hundred seventy three octingentoctotillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentseptentillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentsextillion,
three hundred seventeen octingentquintillion,
three hundred eighty three octingentquattuortillion,
one hundred seventy three octingenttretillion,
eight hundred thirty one octingentdotillion,
seven hundred thirty eight octingentuntillion,
three hundred seventeen octingentillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemnonagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctononagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptennonagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexnonagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinnonagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuornonagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttrenonagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdononagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunnonagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentnonagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemoctogintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctooctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptenoctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinoctogintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuoroctogintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttreoctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdooctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentoctogintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemseptuagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctoseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptenseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuorseptuagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttreseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdoseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctosexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptensexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexsexagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinsexagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuorsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttresexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdosexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunsexagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentsexagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctoquinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptenquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuorquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttrequinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdoquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctoquadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptenquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuorquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttrequadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdoquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemtrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctotrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptentrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsextrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquintrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuortrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttretrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdotrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentuntrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingenttrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctovigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptenvigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquinvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuorvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttrevigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdovigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentunvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemdecillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctodecillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptendecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsexdecillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquindecillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuordecillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttredecillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdodecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentundecillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentdecillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentnovemtillion,
one hundred seventy three septingentoctotillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentseptentillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentsextillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentquintillion,
three hundred eighty three septingentquattuortillion,
one hundred seventy three septingenttretillion,
eight hundred thirty one septingentdotillion,
seven hundred thirty eight septingentuntillion,
three hundred seventeen septingentillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemnonagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctononagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptennonagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexnonagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinnonagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuornonagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttrenonagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdononagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunnonagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three sescentoctooctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptenoctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinoctogintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuoroctogintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttreoctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdooctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentoctogintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemseptuagintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one sescentseptenseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuorseptuagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttreseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdoseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctosexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptensexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexsexagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinsexagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuorsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttresexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdosexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunsexagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentsexagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctoquinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptenquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuorquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttrequinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdoquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctoquadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptenquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuorquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttrequadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdoquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemtrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctotrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptentrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsextrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquintrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuortrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttretrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdotrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentuntrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescenttrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctovigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptenvigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquinvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuorvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttrevigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdovigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentunvigintillion,
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one hundred seventy three sescentoctodecillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptendecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsexdecillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquindecillion,
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seven hundred thirty eight sescentundecillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentdecillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentnovemtillion,
one hundred seventy three sescentoctotillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentseptentillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentsextillion,
three hundred seventeen sescentquintillion,
three hundred eighty three sescentquattuortillion,
one hundred seventy three sescenttretillion,
eight hundred thirty one sescentdotillion,
seven hundred thirty eight sescentuntillion,
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three hundred eighty three quingentnovemnonagintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one quingentseptennonagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexnonagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinnonagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuornonagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttrenonagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdononagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunnonagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentnonagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemoctogintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctooctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptenoctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinoctogintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuoroctogintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttreoctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdooctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentoctogintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemseptuagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctoseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptenseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuorseptuagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttreseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdoseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctosexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptensexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexsexagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinsexagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuorsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttresexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdosexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunsexagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentsexagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctoquinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptenquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuorquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttrequinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdoquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctoquadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptenquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuorquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttrequadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdoquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemtrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctotrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptentrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsextrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquintrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuortrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttretrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdotrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentuntrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingenttrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctovigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptenvigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquinvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuorvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttrevigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdovigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentunvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemdecillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctodecillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptendecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsexdecillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquindecillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuordecillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttredecillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdodecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentundecillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentdecillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentnovemtillion,
one hundred seventy three quingentoctotillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentseptentillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentsextillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentquintillion,
three hundred eighty three quingentquattuortillion,
one hundred seventy three quingenttretillion,
eight hundred thirty one quingentdotillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quingentuntillion,
three hundred seventeen quingentillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentnovemnonagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringentoctononagintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptenoctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsexoctogintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquinoctogintillion,
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one hundred seventy three quadringenttreoctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentdooctogintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptenseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsexseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquinseptuagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three quadringenttreseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentdoseptuagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three quadringentoctosexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptensexagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsexsexagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three quadringentoctoquinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptenquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsexquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquinquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentquattuorquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringenttrequinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentdoquinquagintillion,
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three hundred seventeen quadringentquinquagintillion,
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seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsexquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquinquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentquattuorquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringenttrequadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentdoquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentunquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentnovemtrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringentoctotrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptentrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsextrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquintrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentquattuortrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringenttretrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentdotrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentuntrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringenttrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentnovemvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringentoctovigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptenvigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsexvigintillion,
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one hundred seventy three quadringenttrevigintillion,
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three hundred eighty three quadringentnovemdecillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringentoctodecillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptendecillion,
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three hundred seventeen quadringentquindecillion,
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one hundred seventy three quadringenttredecillion,
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seven hundred thirty eight quadringentundecillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentdecillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentnovemtillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringentoctotillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentseptentillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentsextillion,
three hundred seventeen quadringentquintillion,
three hundred eighty three quadringentquattuortillion,
one hundred seventy three quadringenttretillion,
eight hundred thirty one quadringentdotillion,
seven hundred thirty eight quadringentuntillion,
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three hundred eighty three trecentnovemnonagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three trecenttreoctogintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdooctogintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentunoctogintillion,
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three hundred eighty three trecentnovemseptuagintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one trecentseptenseptuagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsexseptuagintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquinseptuagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three trecenttreseptuagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdoseptuagintillion,
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three hundred seventeen trecentseptuagintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentnovemsexagintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctosexagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptensexagintillion,
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three hundred eighty three trecentquattuorsexagintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one trecentdosexagintillion,
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three hundred eighty three trecentnovemquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctoquinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptenquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsexquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquinquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentquattuorquinquagintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecenttrequinquagintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdoquinquagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentunquinquagintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquinquagintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentnovemquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctoquadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptenquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsexquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquinquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentquattuorquadragintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecenttrequadragintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdoquadragintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentunquadragintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquadragintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentnovemtrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctotrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptentrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsextrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquintrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentquattuortrigintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecenttretrigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdotrigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentuntrigintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecenttrigintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentnovemvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctovigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptenvigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsexvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquinvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentquattuorvigintillion,
one hundred seventy three trecenttrevigintillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdovigintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentunvigintillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentvigintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentnovemdecillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctodecillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptendecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsexdecillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquindecillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentquattuordecillion,
one hundred seventy three trecenttredecillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentdodecillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentundecillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentdecillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentnovemtillion,
one hundred seventy three trecentoctotillion,
eight hundred thirty one trecentseptentillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentsextillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentquintillion,
three hundred eighty three trecentquattuortillion,
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eight hundred thirty one trecentdotillion,
seven hundred thirty eight trecentuntillion,
three hundred seventeen trecentillion,
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three hundred seventeen ducentquinnonagintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one ducentdononagintillion,
seven hundred thirty eight ducentunnonagintillion,
three hundred seventeen ducentnonagintillion,
three hundred eighty three ducentnovemoctogintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one ducentseptenoctogintillion,
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eight hundred thirty one ducentdosexagintillion,
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three hundred eighty three ducentquattuorquinquagintillion,
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one hundred seventy three trillion,
eight hundred thirty one billion,
seven hundred thirty eight million,
three hundred seventeen thousand,
three hundred eighty three

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[sweetooth]

That has got to be the funniest thing I have read in a LONG time!

Objectivists Unite

[captainboogerhead]

It seems the researchers at Pinko U finally realize that routers have always been programmed using the enlightened-self-interest model of bandwidth utilization. It's time to shut them down.

The last thing we need is lazy, welfare dependant internet backbones sitting around all day watching The Dukes of Hazzard and drinking Lite Beer. If the altruists win this round, AOL transforms from the gated-suburb of the internet into the "Projects". Aren't we taxed enough?

Re:Objectivists Unite

[stratjakt]

Routers of the World Unite!

The Bork-shevic revolution is at hand!

Re:Objectivists Unite

[Anonymous Coward]

Ve-a ruooters ere-a reedy tu vurk tooerds zee guel ooff zee pruletereeet. Doon veet cepeetelism. Bork Bork Bork!

Re:Objectivists Unite

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who finds this amusing :-)

For those too lazy to read the article ...

[floppy ears]

It basically says that network congestion is like congestion on highways. If everybody is trying to change lanes all the time, they might save a bit of time for themselves, but on the whole they will slow down traffic for everybody.

In theory, this may slow down the internet by something like 50-60% at most. Nobody really knows how well the Internet conforms to the mathematical model, however. Any benefit from trying to fix the problem might be outweighed by the cost of implementing a solution.

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[Smidge204]

It's funny you should mention how internet traffic is like highway traffic.

There's an amusing, if not somewhat interesting, article writting up on how you can single-handedly relieve traffic congestion here:

http://www.amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.h tm l

It's basically the same idea: If a few people just give a little slack, everybody wins out.
=Smidge=

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[Anonymous Coward]

QOS - Quality of Service; is the answer to this problem.. article is a waste of time.

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[Dynedain]

I've known this phenomenon for quite a while (it makes perfect logical sense) having commuted in rush hour traffic for many years

scary how much thought this guy has put into it....but i bet the transportation department would fund him to do a study

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[ozbird]

It's those damn rubbernecking packets! You'd think they'd never seen an collision before. Move along, nothing to see here...

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[digitalsushi]

I read this link at work about two weeks ago. On the way home, during a typical NH-I93 traffic jam, traffic was moving around 10 mph. I stayed in the right lane and kept about 8 car spaces ahead of me. The guy behind me was FURIOUS (cause he wasn't fast? ..ouch) He was flashing his high beams (still light out) and flicking his car horn in 1/8 second bursts. It was extremely entertaining at 10 mph. Everyone around me was going the same exact speed, I just had about enough space for 8 cars in front of me. Granted for about 8 miles I had to actually stop about 4 times, which when having a standard transmission is very nice to avoid. Anyways, the guy put his blinker on after about fifteen minutes or so of this, and of course the person in the left lane let him right in... he went in for the psych-out bumper clip on my car, and then he slowed Waaaaaay down, flipped off his review mirror (ow you got me pal!) and then he TORE OFF. For 8 car lengths. I swear to God with the bell curve as steep as it is I can't figure out why I'm not a greedy polititian making ubermillion dollars a year. Oh wait- I am not old enough yet. Buwahahahaaaa

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[some guy I know]

That was you?

Re:For those too lazy to read the article ...

[digitalsushi]

what color was my car? :D

DL managers

[zephc]

this is why I hate download managers, especially ones that create dozens of connections to download segments of large files.

My flatmate does that with eDonkey on TWO of his computers and squashed our bandwidth for a week (downloading pr0n of course)

Re:DL managers

[stratjakt]

Huh?

I assume you're sharing across a lan? learn how to throttle the connections.

Most web/ftp sites these days throttle outbound bandwidth per IP. So you can have 1 dl going at 50k, 2 at 25, 4 at 12.5, etc. This was to pretty much solve the problem you're alluding to.

And it has nothing to do with what the article was talking about.

Re:DL managers

[bgarrett]

Download managers aren't really the problem, except when you don't have the bandwidth to sustain parallel downloading. If you have enough pipe, parallel DLs ARE faster than a single serial download.

The problem the paper is describing is at the larger "router's eye view" scale, where multiple routes out to the rest of the network exist, and where only the fastest route is used - the other two pipelines are basically starved of packets.

Re:DL managers

[dffuller]

Hmmmm, what's the difference (to the network) between millions of people downloading 12 files simultaneously during the day instead of downloading them sequentially? Not much on the average, I'd say.

Re:DL managers

[zephc]

my home setup
LAN switch DSL modem ISP world

we have sDSL all routable IPs, at about 80-100K in any direction

i have no way to throttle anything when he is running eDonkey, downloading 5-10 movies at once with over a dozen connections between each. i dont believe eDonkey allowes any kind of throttling, unlike Kazaa.

I lost entire messages over AIM while he was doing that shit.

my http server is set up to allow only 5 connections max now, sincew someone a few months ago started leaching movies from me with FlashGet, killing my own overall speed.

Sure its not related to the article, but when i saw 'selfish' and 'routing' I had to rant a bit.

Re:DL managers

[cymen]

eDonkey has had download throttling in past versions and likely still does.

I call for more research

[Anonymous Coward]

As the article states this is lab-stuff, how it holds on the real internet isn't known.

So lets do some research and if it really makes a diffrence we could route downloads larger then a MB thru other ways, since a 100 ms increase in delay time doesn't matter if your download takes more then 20 seconds.

But the cost for routing large streams in other ways then small streams probably won't be justified.

I say FTTH!

Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[Jugalator]

I suppose this is the heart of the article, btw:

"if routers choose the route that looks the least congested, they are doing selfish routing. As soon as that route clogs up, the routers change their strategies and choose other, previously neglected routes. Eventually the system will settle to an equilibrium that mathematicians call a Nash flow, which will be, on the average, slower than the ideal. "

Now, hasn't there been a problem some time a long time ago in early Internet history where parts of the internet entered a state of self oscillation. I recall this was later fixed somehow to a point by revising some protocols.

I remember it basically as the problem where lots of routers (for some reason) started sending packets to one path, it got very congested, all routers switched to another, congested, etc.

I only have very vague memories since I took the course where I heard it some years ago. Perhaps I'm only full of bullshit. :-)

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[TheSpunkyEnigma]

I think you're referring to Route Flapping

-matt

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[Randolpho]

It's a continuing process, really. There are several protocols and algorithms to reduce congestion (not the least of which is a higher-level protocol known as TCP ;)). I think what's going on here is the author is trying to push a new method to control congestion at the network (routing) level.

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[peterfc]

Backbone routing on the internet has nothing to do with "chosing the least congested path" and everything to do with "hot potato": ie: hading the packet to another network and soon as possible.

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) which is used for 99% of inter-provider backbone routing on the internet looks primarily for the shortest path in terms of number of networks to traverse to the destination.

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[Jugalator]

Ok, thanks for clarifying. Yes, since it was some time I heard about it, I guess it was related to BGP and "route flapping" as TheSpunkyEnigma mentioned. I see there's a lot of articles both regarding the BGP protocol and route oscillation and route flap dampening methods to find at Google, and I'm now pretty sure it was these things I was thinking about.

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[Jmstuckman]

I think a sudden surge in net congestion caused the buffers of all the routers to fill. Because this was before the TTL field, the routers remained in a state of total deadlock, where neither router could send its backlogged packets to any other.

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[evilviper]

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) which is used for 99% of inter-provider backbone routing on the internet looks primarily for the shortest path in terms of number of networks to traverse to the destination.

No... RIP is the only protocol that depends solely on hop-count. BGP has numerous variables with which it judges the best path... Congestion and bandwidth are two of the numerous variables.

It really is up to the Admin to decide which path is the most desirable by defining things such as cost, and possibly modifying the routing policy in other ways as well.

Re:Hasn't something similar happened in the past?

[silas_moeckel]

Actualy BGP can pick a path based upon bandwith but the first and foremost descision is AS path length and prefix length. You can inject other metrics into BGP as well say local link utilization at the peering point. In general it's a BAD idea push trafic to longer distant peers rather than say get more peering bandwith. And BTW hop count never comes into play ok AS path length BGP dosent know or care about how many intervieing routers are there just how many AS's. Some providers like AbiveNet work in the reverse and try and keep the data on there network for as long as possible the easiest way to do this is to summerize with distance so local /24's are advertised say for NYC to the NYC peers but agrigated up into a /19 in Cali More specific routers are allways prefered.

OK With all that said traffic engineering with BGP can be fun and it's allways a question of how much memory the routers have (BGP tables are BIG and router Memory is was to small think 32 megs ish for the current 110k line BGP tables (and Telstra is responcible for most of those the whole internet would thank them if they thaught of agrigating there routes and buying fargin bigger pipes instead of making the rest of the world backhaul for them)

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I could consider this funny, but it's 9 out of 10 times true. Of course RL isn't any better ;p

Altruism is actually selfish

[guacamolefoo]

If the "altruistic" behavior results in a better network, then isn't there a benefit for the altruistic behavior? Doesn't it cease being altruistic if there is a benefit? Aaggh! I'm caught in another Prisoner's Dilemma with an uncertain number of moves!

Where's my Dawkins? (That's twice today I've thought of him).

GF.

Re:Altruism is actually selfish

[tjgrant]

This is a very interesting statement.

I regularly tell people that they should be polite if not for altruistic reasons then for selfish reasons. People have accussed me of being extraordinarily polite: "Yes sir, No sir, Yes Ma'am, No Ma'am," etc. I regularly get treated better by the checker who is half my age, or the fast food cashier, or any number of other individuals; far better than the person in front of me or behind me in line.

So, am I polite for altruistic reasons, or for selfish reasons? It's an interesting question. I would have to say for both reasons.

Re:Altruism is actually selfish

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! You must all try to reach Nash Equilibrium!

Re:Altruism is actually selfish

[Garen]

The idea of altruism is a fantasy. It does not exist, and thats why its definition seems irreconcilable.

Re:Altruism is actually selfish

[Garen]

For selfish reasons, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - it just has a negative connotation.

Do you think you would continue to be "polite" for "altruistic" reasons if people never reciprocated? I doubt it.

You selfish bastards!

[Chocolate Teapot]

I would have had first post but it got stuck in a jam in Toronto.

Somewhat interesting

[rabtech]

It appears that they are claiming routers pick the fastest route to push packets down, which can in turn cause that route to become congested, thus slowing it down, and then the router picks a new route, causing it to become congested and slow down, and so on.

Supposedly, if the router picked the fastest AND least congested route, then some packets might take a little longer to get to their destination, but the overall latency of the internet would decrease.

In theory. In reality, I don't know how much peering arrangements change the equation. You see, if you are a network provider, you have two goals with peering: dump enough traffic onto your peer points so that you are exchanging about equal amounts with your peer AND get traffic that isn't bound for your network OFF your network as quickly as possible.

In practice, this means ISPs who peer have a large incentive to route packets coming from peer parter A directly to peer partner B, without regard for what that does to the latency of the packet, nor the congestion of the peering partners. The peered packets become more like the hot potato, bouncing around peer points until they actually arrive near the destination network. That lowers overall efficiency as well. (companies like Internap don't peer for this reason; they pay for all connection points even though they have enough traffic to get peering points for free. They cost more, but they have very low latency, packet loss, etc).

Re:Somewhat interesting

[evilviper]

And you've worked for internap for how long?

Re:Somewhat interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a few problems with this. I'm assuming thats because you're not familiar with BGP. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is how traffic is routed on the internet. It is how ASes (Indenpended Networks {Earthlink, AT&T, Level 3}) talk to each other.

Most such large networks have two kinds of links to the outside word, Transit and Peering. Transit links are connections to larger providers / backbones that ISPs pay for.

Peering connections are direct links between two ASes. They are cheaper for the ASes to use and best route between two ASes. BGP is used to talking across both kinds of links. One of the many features of BGP is route-maps. These niffty things allow you to, among other things, filter out packets. Peering links are universally filtered so that only packets to a host inside the receiveing AS is allowed in.

Peering links provide a direct connection between large networks and avoid needing to pass traffic over the public internet. This is a good thing.

Also BGP is normally routed _by default_ by the shortest path. The route that goes through the fewest ASes wins. This is a simple metric, but that is a good thing for many reasons. More compelex protocols would not be suitable for the scale of the Internet.

This is not to say that BGP is simple. It allows many way for the adminstraters of an AS to shape traffic. This way each AS optimizes routes so that links don't hit capacity and then the shortist path is usually the fastest.

I would love to comment on the article, but it seems that the papers by this guy are /.ed and news article doesn't convay enought of information to be of any use.

But enought of this /. ranting, I need another long island.

Re:Somewhat interesting

[albanac]

You see, if you are a network provider, you have two goals with peering: dump enough traffic onto your peer points so that you are exchanging about equal amounts with your peer AND get traffic that isn't bound for your network OFF your network as quickly as possible.

Hi,

This depends entirely on your policy decisions. For example, the traffic engineering that I do at my place of work is based around a cold-potato routing policy rather than hot; that is, we will carry our traffic to the point closest to it's destination, thus keeping it in our network for as long as possible rather than vice versa.

There are arguments both sides of each issue, and it really depends on one's own topology and decision-making criterion.

~cHris

Re:Somewhat interesting

[gill_potter]

I used to work for Keynote Systems and the hot potatoe routing was of major concern to customers. Many times you see inbound and outbound routes are significantly different due to the "least cost" associated with dollars in a peering relationship. You can see basic peering times from one of their public service sites, Internet Health Report. You can also do a quick one-off measurement from their demo site My Keynote. Check out the diagnostics tab and run some traceroutes from different backbones and you will immediatly see how congestion at major peering points can effect performance.

So.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Essentially they're saying we should ban US citizens ;-)

But...

[hackwrench]

It said something about not taking the least congested route, which means taking a route that is already congested. "But if routers choose the route that looks the least congested, they are doing selfish routing." But it seems to me that by not chosing the least congested route, all they are doing is mucking things up for those using the more congested route.

No, it isn't. Not quite, anyway. ;-)

[Slartibartfast]

While I grant your point from a literalist standpoint, the terms "altruistic" and "selfish" in these scenarios generally relate not to the aggregate, but to the individual. Any given individual acting "selfishly" WRT routing will win out vs. all acting altruistically for the benefit of the whole.

Or, to quote Spock, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few [but that doesn't make my dying selfish]." ;-)

as long as

[geekoid]

'the internet' is faster then my connection to it, does it really matter?

Re:as long as

[Anonymous Coward]

since in this case the slowest connection matters, i doubt its faster than yours

take an example, a page gets linked from some random geek newsite. then there connection will get very slow. in this case it doesn't matter how fast the routers inbetween are, and the internet is not faster than you connection

Re:as long as

[pi_rules]

'the internet' is faster then my connection to it, does it really matter?

Well, you're looking at this from the perspective as a "home user" where you're a leaf on the Internet. That's okay and all, but there's more than a few Slashdotter's here that actually have to think about this kind of stuff.

With a home connection you're a "leaf" -- you're on the outside and you only have one route to the internet -- your ISP. That is your "gateway" and there's nothing you can do about it.

The article's really talking about major ISPs, and how they peer with other networks. They have multiple routes to a single destination, and these routing tables can get pretty big when you're a big player on a big hub. I'm by no means an expert on the details of it, but I do appreciate the thought that goes into such decisions.

When you want to send a packet to NYC from wherever you are, your network only has once choice: Send it to the ISP and let them figure out what to do with it.

Your ISP may or may not have a choice what to do with it though. If they're a multi-homed place (meaning they have 2 or more connections) they have to decide what route to pass it off to. One of them might only require 1 hop to get to NYC, and the other might require 3. The simple answer is to just send it to the 1 hop route, but in the grand scheme of things it's better to send it to the 3-hop route sometimes because it's less congested.

That's just the tip of the iceberg really, but that might enlighten the issue a bit. It's certainly NOT a concern for a home user, so I can understand your post -- but to anybody that runs an ISP it's a fairly interesting topic.

self love

[OwlofCreamCheese]

self love also makes you go blind and grows hair on your palm...

well there is some porn on the internet... isn't there?

re: self love

[rela]

You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.

Finally, a signature making a reference I get!

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[orkysoft]

If I had modpoints, I'd mod you down, lamez0r!

j/k ;-)

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen, brother. You ass.

these aren't the only things..

[Anonymous Coward]

Road traffic works this way too.

Tragedy of the Commons

[rrkap]

This is essentially a pricing problem.

Here's a quote from the original 1968 paper that used the term

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.

2. The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decisionmaking herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

There are two common solutions to this kind of problem. Regulate use of the common resource or sell it. Because of the structure of the internet, it is hard to fairly price bandwidth and no good regulatory scheme has developed, so I don't see any other answer than living with it.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[zackbar]

The other problems with this analogy are that the commons can be increased, without limit (theoretically), albeit at cost and time; and that if the commons are overgrazed, demand will die off from lack of availability without actually killing anyone off. (who wants to play quake 2 on the net when the lag is several minutes?)

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[rrkap]

The other problems with this analogy are that the commons can be increased, without limit (theoretically), albeit at cost and time; and that if the commons are overgrazed, demand will die off from lack of availability without actually killing anyone off. (who wants to play quake 2 on the net when the lag is several minutes?)

The same is true of grazing land. In both cases the asset becomes significantly less valuable because of a poor pricing structure

Re:tragedy of the commons

[nomadic]

what is needed is institutions that effectively manage common resources, and such institutions have emerged repeatedly and continue to exist

Yes, we call those institutions "governments".

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[idontgno]

Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality.

Herein lies the inherent limit of the tragedy of the commons: The ability to load the common resource correlates with the trust the users feel in the common's stability. As long as I can drive another cow onto the pasture without fear that the neighbor will shoot the cow or me, I will. But once I feel I can't trust the shared resource--once the social stability is gone--I'll stop using the common and find some other way, because the cost (to me) of the common is no longer a fraction of the value I derive from it, but possibly total loss.

Alternately, if social stability deteriorates radically, it may catch the users of the common off-guard before they can do their subconscious value calculations. If I drive one more cow onto the commons and it starts a stampede, killing many of the cattle (mine and my neighbors), and killing some of those neightbors, and starting violent feuds and vendettas among us who used the common, the cost of the common maximizes.

Either way, the tragedy of the commons is eventually fulfilled, and everyone stops using the shared resource. Self-limiting, at least until the next time.

What does this mean for the net? It will get progressively worse until "death of the net (mpegs at 11!)", after which we survivors will crawl out of our IPv6 bomb shelters and rule the Earth.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[Zeinfeld]

Here's a quote from the original 1968 paper that used the term

Perhaps if you had read the article you would know the phrase comes from William Forster Lloyd (1794-1852).

The tragedy of the Commons was used as a political weapon in the class warfare of the Victorian era. Those with Scottish ancestry might know this as 'the clearances', in England they were the enclosures.

Basically the aristocracy transferred the common land from public ownership to private ownership. Since they wrote the acts of parliament they gave themselves the best deal. The result being a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.

The deck was stacked so that the aristocracy quickly got control of the small proportion of the land that went to the peasants. It was similar to the land grab that made Bush rich. They bought a sports team then started building a bigger stadium using the pliant local council to confiscate large amounts of land at below market rates which were then used for development and sold for a vast profit.

So the tragedy of the commons is not a politically neutral term. Also the real tragedy for the peasants came when the aristocracy used it as an excuse for exploitation. Its a bit like the plans for privatising social security, there is a problem there but it is being used as an excuse for a political agenda, not as something that is to be addressed for its own sake.

When tragedy of the commons is used in relation to the Internet it is usually to justify some form of corporate or governmental control.

Re:tragedy of the commons

[praksys]

Most cultures with a common land tradition also have a set of rules for governing land use that avoids such tragedies

A commons is a resource that everyone is free to use as they wish. What history really shows is that commons are (ha ha) relatively uncommon. Societies do not leave resources as commons because of the problems that result from doing so. Instead they come up with systems that limited what individuals could do with such resources. Sometimes that meant a system of private property, where individuals got to control some part of the resource, sometimes a system of collective property, where some collective body would control the resource, but in almost every case resources were not left as commons.

Of course you are right that western observers often failed to recognise the systems of management set up in other societies, especially when these did not resemble the kinds of systems that had arisen in Europe.

Re:tragedy of the commons

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations - this is the best post on Slashdot, ever.

Re:tragedy of the commons

[keyslammer]

Yes, we call those institutions "governments".

We call them "governments" when they stand around the commons with guns and tell everyone what they can and cannot do.

When they arise spontaneously out of agreements between those who rely on the commons, we call them "free markets".

Re:tragedy of the commons

[Registered Coward v2]

We call them "governments" when they stand around the commons with guns and tell everyone what they can and cannot do.

When they arise spontaneously out of agreements between those who rely on the commons, we call them "free markets".


Then when those who rely on the commons take up arms to keep out people who want to use them differently, what do we call them?

Re:tragedy of the commons

[keyslammer]

what is needed is institutions that effectively manage common resources

If you have an institution managing a common resource, then it's not a commons: it is a resource that is effectively owned by the institution.

be very very careful when introducing monetary incentives into a system that has previously relied on cooperation and cultural norms.

The internet may have been small enough to rely on cooperation and cultural norms at one time, but I submit that this has not been so in many years.

Communal approaches to management of shared resources tend to be adopted by very small communities - in cases like these, everybody knows everybody else and if you screw up you're going to hear about it from your neighbors (or tribal chieftans).

Market-based systems, by contrast, are much more scalable - they tend to work better in situations where you have millions of neighbors because instead of relying on altruism (which tends to thin out after 2 degrees of separation), they rely on self interest (which pretty much stays constant no matter who you're dealing with). What kind of system do you think will work best for the global internet?

Re:tragedy of the commons

[keyslammer]

Then when those who rely on the commons take up arms to keep out people who want to use them differently, what do we call them?

Homeowners organizations! ;-)

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Either way, the tragedy of the commons is eventually fulfilled

No. It's not inevitable. Shared resources do not inevitably die. Besides, on the internet, ISPs tend to act as policemen; any user trying to abuse the net also abuse the ISP and give them a bad name, if it gets bad enough; the ISP itself loses its feeds.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[idontgno]

No. It's not inevitable. Shared resources do not inevitably die.

Without intervention--the goodwill and self-restraint of the participants, or externally-imposed restraints, or a change of resource costing--it is inevitable. However, you're quite right in that there are restraining factors. The net, as a commons, has fences and gates which are guarded by the ISPs. They can impose pricing changes and enforce use restrictions (d/l caps, for instance) that can extend the life of the shared resource.

So your point, that the "social stability" of the net is guarded by some of its users (ISPs), is well made. In engineering speak, the net degrades more gracefully than a complete collapse (which is why I was attempting to mock the whole "end of the net" line of thought, even as I used it as an extreme example).

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Without intervention--the goodwill and self-restraint of the participants, or externally-imposed restraints, or a change of resource costing--it is inevitable.

Yes. In practice there nearly always are these restraints. The actual tragedy of the commons is something of a myth I think, historically; I'm not aware of any definitive example.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[idontgno]

There is some archaeological evidence of the tragedy of the commons in the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. The general tenor of this evidence is that much of Mankind's earliest cradles were well forested with coniferous or deciduous trees. Since these trees were a common resource, everyone cut them freely for fuel and building materials. Now, these regions of the world are scrubland with only tended crop trees (nuts, olives) and very few stands of wild wood.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I suppose in order to prove it, you would have to show that the forest didn't disappear in areas that were owned by someone, otherwise it's not tragedy of the commons, it's just economics. I am a little skeptical about tragedy of the commons in most cases; although I'm sure it can actually occur.

Re:Tragedy of the Commons

[zackbar]

There's a finite limit to land, especially available for grazing.

Internet prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

Within 5 years networks connected to the internet will have to undergo a router emissions test to check for worthless and broken packets. If the level is too high they will be required to have their routers/servers/workstations repaired within 30 days or their connection to the net will be suspended.

what would ayn rand say?

[Anonymous Coward]

she's probably spinning in her grave right now, you socialist pigs.

I disagree - Salvation is never offtopic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially when concerning trivial matters such as electronic communication and the internet.

Slashdotting

[TheViciousOverWind]

So people, please take a number. One at a time, don't slashdot all at once.

what routing protocol are they referring to?

[mdouglas]

"Routers have many ways to decide. Sometimes they send out test packets and time them."

it isn't RIP, OSPF, EIGRP, or BGP. i don't know ISIS, but i strongly suspect these people are talking out of their asses.

Re:what routing protocol are they referring to?

[peter]

They also modelled links as having latency linearly proportional to traffic volume. They didn't say anything about having hard limits on traffic volume for any links, which seems odd. They later tried using a quadratic relationship between time and traffic volume, but that doesn't jibe with results from queuing theory (latency ~ exp(max - current), IIRC).

At least they admit they have no idea whether their mathematical models mirror real life!

Re:what routing protocol are they referring to?

[peter]

I had the wrong formula for latency. See my later comment, with links to actual queueing theory results.

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to rely on MY OWN goodwill I would be screwed!

By The Deceptive Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal: +10

[Anonymous Coward]

Do your part tomorrow in protesting SchrubCo.'s War on Everything

Cheers,
W00t

Get Your War On Page 19

QoS?

[chill]

Wouldn't a decent implementation of QoS help this situation?

Instead of a router choosing the fasted or least-congested route for a packet, it could also factor in things like what type of packet/service it is.

NNTP, e-mail, and other non-interactive, non-realtime packets could be shunted down secondary pipes -- you'd never notice most of it anyway.

QoS on IPv4 doesn't really have the granularity for this, and it seems most routers on the 'net ignore those bits anyway.

I believe this was one of the things that IPv6 was supposed to address.

i dont understand

[uchi]

Here is how I think of the internet: the router somehow discovers which route is the quickest, and if it has data to send, it sends it via the quickest source. if that source becomes too congested, then obviously another method will arise to transfer the data, and that route will be used. so given that there is a set amount of bandwidth trying to be transfered, and a set amount of total bandwidth available for each connection, how is sending data through a slower connection going to help at all? thanks. PS: I read the article, its just that I have no clue what game theory is and how it applies to this.

How it gets modded insightful

[hackwrench]

I suspect it has something to do with the Emperor wearing no clothes. That being said, I'm an Imperialist!

OT RE: Your Sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a reference to the panopticon (as in the idea for a prison/building) or am I confusing "references" and "values" ;-)

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[AntiNorm]

Really?

Tragedy of the commons

[MisanthropicProggram]

The Economists call this the "Tragedy of the Commons." Talk amongst yourselves.

Similar to Automobile Traffic

[Walker]

In many (but certainly not all), Internet traffic is similar to automobile traffic. Packets are discrete objects, like cars, and not continuous like a river or radio signal. Analysis on automobile traffic has already discovered properties like this. There are many simulations that show if we all ensured 3 car lengths between us and the next car, we would avoid the accordion and get to work significantly faster.

Re:Similar to Automobile Traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many simulations that show if we all ensured 3 car lengths between us and the next car, we would avoid the accordion and get to work significantly faster.

Of course this ignores the horrible drivers such as old people that don't pay ANY FUCKING ATTENTION to what they are doing and have a reaction time of 8 minutes.

Re:Similar to Automobile Traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

or even worse, asians.

Re:Similar to Automobile Traffic

[Anonymous Coward]

are you talking about the little ricers that burn around in their civic type-Rs, or the older ones straight outta japan that turn on their flashers and drive 10 miles an hour when it's raining?

This is a very odd article.

[BusDriver]

This article makes no sense from a proper real world routing perspective.

Any provider who is doing anything slightly serious will be using BGP4 routing for their EGP. It does NOT send out magic packets to find best paths. It learns routes from it's peers and will choose the best route based on a defined set of decisions. Routers do not keep a list of "neglected routes." If one route goes away, the router will simply pick the next best path.

Read more about BGP4 from Cisco's website. You will find little in common with this article and the one linked in the story.

Good routing relies on good admins with a well defined routing policy. There is no such thing as a "selfish" router.

Tim

Re:This is a very odd article.

[LowneWulf]

"If one route goes away, the router will simply
pick the next best path."

That's the point! The article says that according to mathematical theory, this approach is not ideal.

Basically, by sending some packets along alternate routes that are actually slower, while that individual packet may arrive later, statistically the packets will arrive faster.

tragedy of the commons

[urbazewski]

This is not the main point of the article but:

The Tragedy of the Commons , often cited by environmentalists, describes 14th-century Britain, where each household tried to gain wealth by putting as many animals as possible on the common village pasture. Overgrazing ruined the pasture, and village after village collapsed.

The "tragedy of the commons" that Hardin's article is devoted to is increasing world population. What evidence is there for overgrazing in England before as opposed to during and after the forced transition to private ownership? Most cultures with a common land tradition also have a set of rules for governing land use that avoids such tragedies, for example, irrigation systems in Bali where the farmer who gets the water last controls the water flow. Ones that didn't solve the problem of overuse of resources are conspicuous by their non-existence (Easter Island, some settlements in the Southwest US, some populations on islands in the South Pacific ).

The 'tragedy of the commons' is one of the most misunderstood and overused metaphors of our times. The idea that a system with resources held in common is necessarily unworkable is false --- what is needed is institutions that effectively manage common resources, and such institutions have emerged repeatedly and continue to exist. Often it is when these cultures come into contact with market-oriented societies that the traditional systems are undermined and collapsed. Often what happens is not "the tragedy of the commons" but "the tragedy of failed privatization" in which a traditional management system is destroyed without establishing a viable alternative.

How does this relate to the internet? It's a cautionary tale --- be very very careful when introducing monetary incentives into a system that has previously relied on cooperation and cultural norms.

blog-O-rama

They botched others' ideas

[Salamander]

The problem is not that service providers pick the route that gets the packet to its destination quickest; it's that they pick the route that gets the packet off their network the fastest. Those two are not the same thing at all. Think about it geographically. Let's say I'm a square network and I receive a packet at the northern end of my western border destined for somewhere to my northeast. I know that the quickest way to get it to its destination is to move it east across my own network and deliver it to my eastern neighbor. However, I also know that if I pass it on to my northern neighbor it will still get there without coming to me again, and my northern neighbor is closer. So, if I'm a selfish bastard, what do I do? I ship it northward, minimizing the time that it spends on my own network but increasing the total time before it reaches its destination. If everyone does this same sort of "hot potato" routing, total load on the network increases for everyone. In fact, my northern neighbor might very well be doing the same for packets lying to our southwest. We'd both be better off if we'd "play nice" but since we're both trying to be selfish we both lose.

Yes, folks, it's an instance of the prisoners' dilemma and these researchers are not the first to notice the fact.

Re:They botched others' ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that packet you describe would only have to travel a long way through a network in every other network(assuming they're all the same size and shape). Think of it the same way most programming books describe Bresenham's line algorithm. Each network is a pixel, and the packet is the true lay of the line.

It *shouldn't* spend much time in your network. If that packet is going north or northwest anyway, send it north! If it's going straight across your network, though, it's all yours. The fact is, most cases are going to be handled as efficiently as they would have been in a more "friendly" environment.

My take on this situation is that these guys need an excuse to flap their lips and get government money.

Re:They botched others' ideas

[Salamander]

If that packet is going north or northwest anyway, send it north!

I didn't say it was going northwest; it was going northeast, and the shortest route would have been "straight across my network". That's all besides the fact that real networks don't have such simple geometry, so line algorithms are utterly irrelevant.

The fact is, most cases are going to be handled as efficiently as they would have been in a more "friendly" environment.

If only. The whole point is that it's not handled that way. Did you look up from your graphics-algorithm textbook to read what I actually wrote?

Re:They botched others' ideas

[peter]

Even worse, the network to your north might hand it back to you a bit farther east, and the taken path might go NE,SE,NE,SE,etc. (Could this really happen with BGP? Or is it uncommon to have multiple connections to the same AS at different points in your AS? I don't know the details of BGP...)

SLASHDOT: THIS IS YOUR EDITOR

[Anonymous Coward]

Michael is this paranoid and egotistical fucker.

Re:SLASHDOT: THIS IS YOUR EDITOR

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I know everything! This cocksucker is much worse than Hitler, Stalin and Saddam combined!

all americans...

[Anonymous Coward]

...suck cock

Did anyone else misread that?

[Kelerain]

First thought: What do oysters have to do with internet?
Second thought: OOPS! SELfish...
Third thought: ??????
Fourth thought: Profit!

Classic Prisoners Dilema problem

[acomj]

This is a classic example of the prisoners dilema problem.

Basically if everyone acts unselfishly they do better. But from each individuals perspective they do better when they act selfish, so it all falls apart. Its interesting stuff and the prisoners dilema game algorithms are interesting.

Prisoners Dilema

Play the dilema game online

Copy of the Paper

[Over_and_Done]

This comes from a PhD dissertation that can be found here (its a pdf). Looks interesting, if a bit long.

Throughput vs latency

[Anonymous Coward]

This article did not differentiate between the two. Perhaps a strategy that night optimize one of them would pessemize the other.

reference on Balinese water temples

[urbazewski]

This summary of the Balinese water temple system is from an article by Bradley J. Ruffle and Richard H. Sosis that looks at the use of religious practice to encourage cooperation via field experiments in kibbutzim.

It follows that multinational corporations and foreign institutions investing in the developing world and dependent on collaboration with the indigenous people may profit from preserving indigenous ritual practices and the environment in which they take place. The well-documented water temple system of Bali represents a case in point (see Lansing, 1991, for an authoritative study). A lake in a volcanic crater on the island as well as the rains that run off of the volcano irrigate Bali's rice fields. The Balinese have developed what has proven to be an ingenious cooperative system of aqueducts to supply water in equitable amounts to the surrounding farmers. At the heart of this coordinated effort lies an indigenous religion that worships, among other deities, Dewi Danu, the goddess of the waters emanating from the volcano in whose honor an immense temple stands at the volcano's summit. Smaller temples for worship are located at every branch of the irrigation system and at the fields onto which the aqueducts empty.

The wisdom and success of the Balinese water temple system became clear when the Asian Development Bank imposed a farming alternative on the Balinese in the 1980s. The Asian Development Bank concluded in 1988 that, "The substitution of the "high technology and bureaucratic" solution proved counter-productive and was the major factor behind the yield and cropped areas declines experienced between 1982 and 1985 ... The cost of the lack of appreciation of the merits of the traditional regime has been high. Project experience highlights the fact that the irrigated rice terraces of Bali form a complex artificial ecosystem which has been recognized locally over centuries" (quoted from Lansing, 1991, p. 124).

Lansing, J. S. (1991) "Priests and Programmers: Technologies of power in the engineered landscape of Bali ", Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leviatan, U., H. Oliver, J. Quarter (1998)

blog-O-rama

Re:No, it isn't. Not quite, anyway. ;-)

[guacamolefoo]

But what is the "selfish" object? The individual network administrator or some larger body, such as a college or business?

What is the gene, and what is the gene's machine?

In the Spock case, the Starfleet is the selfish body benefitting by the "altruism". Spock is merely an automaton carrying out the selfish wishes of the organization. If he is benefitting his "genes", then his death is immaterial. Look at cooperative family behaviors.

Of course there is no physical gene in Spock's case, but perhaps the idea of a Starfleet is the meme that survives because of Spock's behavior.

GF.

GF.

Re:I'm confused too!

[Pharmboy]

I'm confused too. The article states that computers test the routes, and pick the least congested route to use. Thus, it slows everything down for everyone.

What should it do? Pick the MOST congested route? Either I'm just confused, the author didn't understand the situation correctly, or the whole thing is BS.

Thank you. I was sitting there reading it, thinking "this sounds like a load of shit. Either I am a blithering idiot (entirely possible) or this article is worthless."

Its sounds like a purely acedemic exercise that is being underwritten by someone with too much money, that has NO practical application.

Glad to know I'm not alone in the confusion.

Build more lanes?

[cptgrudge]

What happens in an ideal situation when traffic becomes congested in a city? They build more roads. Or more lanes. Or build up more mass transit. What is the commonality between all these? It moves more people.

Messing with routing seems to be the same as the DOT messing with shuffling cars and metering lights. Instead of focusing on how we can change all these routing patterns, why don't we just "build more roads"? I realize it isn't exactly trivial to do that, and that the backbones might be pretty tough, but what about all that "dark fiber" that is supposedly just laying around? That's the equivalent of not using an open freeway in a major city during rush hour! We've already got the road, but we just don't use it.

Wouldn't doing that just open up more bandwidth for people, at least locally?

Re:Build more lanes?

[Dynedain]

the problem is what the ends of the "dark fiber" connect to

It isn't a freeway between say New York and Washington D.C. thats dark and unused, its the major freeway between Safeway and bob's convenience store.

Does that make any sense? The dark fiber is dark because its not needed because of what it connects to.

Re:Build more lanes?

[Unregistered]

It'll cause pollution. DUH That many more packets on the road will release more greenhouse gasses. We need HDP(High Data Packets) routs for packets containing more crucial info. These routs could be on the left of the routs to avoid having to merge with the Single occupant packets and have special exit and entrance gateways. Also prefhaps "hybrid" packets that pollute less will be released and allowed to use the HDP lanes.

Re:Build more lanes?

[Cid Highwind]

The "build more lanes" approach *hasn't worked* for roads. Why should we think it will work for bandwidth?

The key is in the degradation curve

[phamlen]

I think the important issue is the degradation behavior as more traffic is added. Essentially, if you add 1% more traffic to a particular network route, it may overload it so much that the average speed drops by much more than 1% (say 10%). Thus, everyone would go faster if they didn't insist on trying (and therefore overloading) the fastest route.

To use a droll real-world example, consider the following:

1. You get given a new project on top of your two existing projects.
   
2. You spend some time on the new project, attend some meetings, etc.
   
3. You fall behind on the second project because you're doing some work on the third.
   
4. The second project manager schedules a meeting to find out why you're behind schedule.
   
5. You catch up on the second project, but fall behind on #1 and #3
   
6. The first and third project managers now schedule meetings to find out why you're late.
   
7. Soon, you have no time to do any work because you're busy explaining why you're so busy!
   

The article is suggesting that if some people used alternate routes, then the primary routes wouldn't get overloaded and therefore would get more done.

Real selflish routing

[gregm]

In my town, back in the day, we had a total of 2 local ISPs whose nocs were less than a block apart. I worked at one and a friend at the other. we tried like hell to get the 2 companies to string some cat5 between the 2 buildings and ease the load on each of our T1's. They wouldn't do it, wouldn't even talk about it. So whenever I sent an email to one of my friends who subscribed to the other ISP, it got to travel out our T1, halfway across the country and back, and down their T1. Stupid.

G

Re:They botched others' ideas-Network "chicken".

[Anonymous Coward]

Which nicely frames the (P2P,Buffet-style) vs ISP broadband battle nicely. Now who's the first to blink?

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[maysonl]

My life has taught me a complementary truth: if you don't have the goodwill of others, you're totally screwed.
If you rely on the goodwill of others, and demonstrate goodwill to them, your life will get better.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

/. nerds make fun of YOU!

Re:Build more lanes?-Oddsmaker 2000

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's going to pay for it, you? Remember part of the prisioners dilemma is the concept of selfishness. If it's selfishness that created the situation, then one can't depend on selfishness to alleviate it. Altruism can, but then altruism can keep the situation from arising to begin with. Now you see why it's called a "dilemma"

Re:I'm confused too!

[Zork the Almighty]

Actually, just think about it from a larger perspective. There are many independent routers out there, and they each decide how to route their traffic simultaneously. Now, imagine that the least congested path (#1) is only slightly better than other potential paths. The problem is that _everyone makes the same decision_ and chooses this one path for their traffic. The result is congestion on the one popular path everyone chose. If that was the only effect, nobody would really care - but here's the catch : at the next time interval the same thing is likely to happen again! Everyone chooses #2 on the list, since #1 is now toast. They all crash into each other.

At the same time, I don't see how their suggestion really helps things that much. If everyone uses the same deterministic algorithm to choose a path, this sort of mass collision is still likely to happen (although it should happen less often with more complicated algorithms). I think that overall network performance would benefit from a little randomness in the routing algorithms. I'm not a CS, so there is probably already a random component that I don't know about.

Lets here if for ipv6

[Billly Gates]

Ipv6 supports better Qos so if the fastest route is congested the router can more easily find out and select an alternative route.

Internet2 has an extremely fast backbone and is based on Ipv6. This will help greatly since the backbone of the current internet can be quite congested at times. Lets hope its implemented soon as the current problem will likely go away.

hasn't this always been the case?

[mindstrm]

I mean, the metrics a network uses to determine the best route are not at
all necessarily what is fastest, or what is closest..... it can be completely arbitrary.

Lowest latency, least used, least hops, least dollar cost, etc.
Some networks try to offload traffic to other networks as fast as possible. Others try to get data as close to the destination as possible before offloading it. In both cases, everything would work fine, if only everyone played by the same rules.

Cornell scientists are trying to get a grant.

[SourceHammer]

Cornell University scientists are not idiots. In fact they are competing for grant money.

If scientist would only take all grant money and divide it up equally amongst themselves, I might buy this thesis.

Re:I'm confused too!

[Pharmboy]

even IF every router used the same algorithm, it would be based upon what is fastest FROM THAT ROUTER. They all would see the fastest as something else from their point. And they all don't use the same algorithm :)

ithaca

[Anonymous Coward]

YEA ITHACA!

Use Poor Routing - Better Performance?

[JWSmythe]

Ok, this has to be the most convoluted article I've ever read.. They're effectively saying, don't use the best route, pick another, because your extra traffic may break the best route.

We diagramed a sample network here in the office, to try and explain what we just read to ourselves.. We picked 5 cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Miami), and drew direct routes between Miami, LA, and NY to each other. Chicago gets routes to NY and LA. Dallas gets routes to everything but Chicago.

We then contemplated what a packet from LA to NY would be looking at.

On our mythical network, we have the following ping times.

LA -> NY 20ms
LA -> Chicago -> NY 25ms
LA -> Dallas -> NY 40ms
LA -> Miami -> NY 60ms

So, we shoudn't be selfish, and take the LA->NY route? We should direct our traffic LA->Dallas->NY ? If this route is already slow or conjested, what good does that do? Now instead of using a perfectly good route, we're killing a conjected one.

If LA->NY is the best/fastest at the time, use it. If/when that becomes more conjested, it will no longer be the best choice, and the new best choice will be chosen..

Not everyone is going to be using YOUR best choice all the time.. Very doubtful that Miami will be routing to LA to go to NY. If they do, it's because Miami->LA is already overloaded. But as it usually works, For Miami->NY, there is already a second best choice (Miami->Dallas->NY).

No matter how we look at it, this doesn't make any sense.. Here's a sample of the lines for our example.

LA->NY OC192
LA->Chicago OC48
Chicago->NY OC48
LA->Dallas OC48
Dallas->NY OC24

So, we'll leave the LA->NY route empty, and keep dumping our load onto the lesser routes?

I do like the idea though, to keep the best choice (LA->NY) open for myself.. Everyone else chooses the second best route.. Go ahead and flood those OC48's, I'll use the OC192 that no one else uses.. :)

Re:Use Poor Routing - Better Performance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations, you have successfully missed the point.

They're effectively saying, don't use the best route, pick another, because your extra traffic may break the best route.

Nope. They're saying "don't always use the best route."

You should distribute your path amongst these based upon ping time and (more importantly) bandwidth.

If you saturate one connection, you'll have a large number of collisions, but if you distribute your packets among all available connections, over all it will take less time for the packets to traverse the network.

Re:Use Poor Routing - Better Performance?

[peter]

The problem is that routers don't update often enough to notice when one route is getting congested. They will keep using the LA -> NY route even if it is so congested that LA->Chicago->NY would be faster. Ideally, you'd load-balance the routes based on how much traffic you were sending over them.

Summary of main results.

[obnoximoron]

of the main paper : http://www.cs.cornell.edu/timr/papers/indep_full.p df and others.

1. Their basic idea is to model decentralized routing as a Nash game and then worst-case compare the performance of this game with the best achievable by ANY algorithm, decentralized or not. This sort of comparison is common in the field of competitive analysis .

2. Assuming a hop latency to increase linearly with additional traffic on it, selfish routing causes the average packet latency to increase by no more than 4/3 of that caused by ideal optimal routing. This worst-case figure had been earlier called "the Price of Anarchy" by Papadimitriou, a famous researcher in algorithmic complexity who every CS student loves to hate :P

3. Similar Prices of Anarchy have been derived by them for when the hop latency increases nonlinearly with the additional traffic on it.

4. The worst case is always achievable with a simple network of 2 nodes connected by parallel links. This is the exactly the example used in networking courses and textbooks to illustrate the oscillation problem caused by selfish routing. This paper says that using this simple network as example is justified since the worst case can be always be analysed with it.

5. Instead of optimizing routing to try reach the minimum possible average latency, you can keep the routing selfish but double each link capacity and achieve the same result.

Re:Summary of main results.

[peter]

Thank you. It surprised me how many people misunderstood the article _and_ got modded way up. It's not usually that bad.

I doubt that a linear or quadratic latency vs. traffic volume relationship is anywhere near accurate. Queuing theory says it's more like Q/(1-Q), where Q = arrival rate / processing rate. See this web site. I'd be surprised if their linear or quadratic models give very useful results. If they're running a computer simulation anyway, why not get it right and use a reasonable queuing theory result? Hmm, I'm sure it's easier to model links with infinite capacity that just get slower and slower than it is to write a model that deals with dropping packets.

Important Traffic -- Selfish Routing -- Prv.. Net

[hhawk]

I think the application this research might be in highly private networks like those built on top of Cable TV systems...

In the future most if not all digital cable will be transmitted via IP including VOD -- Video On Demand.

Every at 8pm will want the their own movie and the network will need some type of active yield managment. Pricing will be one way (it might cost more at 8pm than at 1am, etc.)

However If selfish networks are 1.33 to 1.66 times slower than ideal, the wasted speed would be critical to the private network i'm talking about.

They might want your data coming and going from /. or google to take the slowest route so that the VOD of American Idol or Joe Hacker make it to more homes in your 'hood.' Etc., etc., etc.

Re:I'm confused too!

[susano_otter]

No need for a deterministic algorithm:

1. Choose the nth least congested path, where n is the statistical "sweet spot".
2. Add randomness, so that your actual choices oscillate around n.
3. Include logic to keep your random deviations from getting too far from n, where "too far" is "unacceptably sucky".
4. For great justice!!!

Co-operation

[foxalopex]

Actually this makes sense if you think about it, society works much in this way. If we help each other then everyone wins. If we each selfishly try to do everything to only our own benefit, then we all loose. Also if you think about it, true criminals are completely selfish. ;)

DL managers..

[Anonymous Coward]

.. they do cause problems for server admins.

I have an FTP server with big files everyone wants. That means that most of the downloaders use download managers that connect with at average 5-7 connections / file. (I have seen an advert for a manager that uses 20 connections!)

These people normally don't even have a fat pipe to fill their downloads with. If they did, one connection would really be enough for them. Many of them are using modems! That means that bandwidth is not a problem.

Problem is that if I'm supposed to sustain a relatively good speed and not create too many processes to eat system resources, I'm going to limit maximum connections to some limit.

If I use limit of 100 users, each of them is going to get 1% of my bandwidth. Wrong. If I get 5 of those, who use 20 connections, I'm out of download slots. With some bad luck, these are all modem users that download with their 4kB/s for a long time.. until they finish their downloads and maybe with some luck, someone with a decent connection can have their turn.

With 5 downloads / user, that makes about 20 real clients. With modem users that makes about 80kB/s total traffic instead of 10 kB/s for 100 clients at average (saturated 10mbps connection).

So.. should the servers support minimum of 10 kB/s sustained traffic for 100 people or hope that all people use download managers and up the limit 5-20x to 500-2000 clients and hope that people don't really try to use better connections to download anything, because all of them are going to get is only 0,5 kB/s / connection anyway?

I don't think that's going to make downloads any faster.

Expressway analogy

[per11]

Are they going to make people not choose the best route like the cops in NJ pull you over for driving in the left lane?

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[Saeger]

I'm glad the government taxes my goodwill to hell! That way I don't have enough goodwill left over to even have to worry about picking a charity! woohoo!

--

Politeness

[sbeitzel]

I have found that being polite has several wonderful benefits:

• the other party tends to reciprocate, making the interaction civil and therefore less stressful
• often, the other party is so pleased to encounter someone who extends a bit of courtesy that he or she will perform services not usually rendered (oh, here, let me take care of that for you -- it's no problem -- have a great day!)
• it shortens unwanted interactions. If you want to talk to me and I don't particularly want to talk to you (typical for telemarketers for instance), then if I'm polite and clear you'll finish the transaction quickly. But if I'm rude, the transaction takes longer to complete and may be reinitiated multiple times.

Courtesy -- it's not just for dates. ;-)

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[daaan]

even more relevant...remember this? [giveboobs.com]

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[xombo]

I remember seeing the give boobs when she only had $25, wow. I am always scared those are just people who want money, and think of some way to get it from people. It is still very nice that people on the internet can still have good will at times. As long as they give somthing back after taking so much, especailly the person with $20k debt.

Reminds me of what Adolf Hitler said..

[Anonymous Coward]

The common good before self interest.

Go Away, don't read this

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, seems we have here another crappy /. article. Some Phd student has some pdfs about optimal routing and a news source writes about it. The problem is the news article completly fails to make sense. The pdfs are buried under the /. effect, but the news article describe a problem that DOESN'T HAPPEN IN ANY network built in the last 10 years.

How do I become an editer? At least I can idenfity pesduo science.

Re:Go Away, don't read this

[flailking]

you would have to first learn how to spell editor...

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[SpectreGadget]

If there's anything the Internet has taught me. is that Mr. George Hull (not P.T. Barnum) was right.

When Love Comes to Town

[No_Weak_Heart]

Jeepers, always such high quality thinking going on at Valentine's! And just about any other arbitrarily important date, I suppose. Here's an interesting article from the Guardian about the science that gets press on this day of love.

The existance of so much spam

[earthforce_1]

Is unfortunate proof that altruism breaks down on a large scale. This is the fundamental flaw of socialism - humans evolved from simian ancestors, who basically lived in small tribal groups. We are altruistic up to a maximum of about 75 or so individuals, then it breaks down.

I have seen videotape of a psychology experiment, where an individual feigned a serious medical problem and keeled over in the middle of the street. When the test subject tried this on a busy urban thoroughfare, large passing crowds actually stepped over the guy. But in a small village, shopkeepers rushed out onto the street to try and help him.

There was a famous murder case in NYC where over 100 neighbours heard a woman begging for help as she was having her life snuffed out over a sadistic killer over a period of time. Nobody reported it or tried to intervene, they all assumed somebody else would do something about it. This resulted in the passage of a law, which as I recall was the subject of the final Seinfeld episode.

Re:I'm confused too!

[JWSmythe]

Good.. I was thinking we're idiots too.. Either that, or I need to start routing all my traffic down the most conjested pipes to watch it go faster. :)

I've worked with our provider a bit with routing. We have mirrored servers in colo's around the country. If one city is conjested, we move traffic *AWAY* from the conjestion. Usually our traffic makes a difference for everyone else. I can have 500Mb/s added or removed from any given city within an hour, without flinching. Of course, before I do something like that, I put in a call first.. "Hey, can this city take 500Mb/s right now?"

We wrote a program to take traceroutes from all the cities to various points, and plot them all onto a big network map, with ping times and the like.. We know which cities, peerings, or lines have problems at a glance..

http://www.voyeurweb.com/network.12.23.2002-11h.pn g
Warning: This picture is *BIG*. It's of our networks in Los Angeles, New York, Tampa, between each other, and to all of the root nameservers.. It makes a rather extensive map that is 11580x2669. It won't fit on your screen. Save it, and take it into your favorite image editing software to view it..

This map is a little old (Dec 23, 2002 at 11am), but it gives a good impression of what the networks immediately around our servers looked like, and how they interact with each other.. Shitty networks stand out in red.. I definately wouldn't want to MORE of my traffic that way. Sometimes we don't have a choice. If your ISP uses a shitty provider, we have to send it that way..

definition of "commons"

[urbazewski]

The Digital Library of the Commons definition, in short:

The commons is a general term for shared resources in which each stakeholder has an equal interest.

They go on to note that:

Research on commons usually focuses on some aspect of the relation between the physical resource and human institutions designed in the use and maintenance of that resource.

The statement that If you have an institution managing a common resource, then it's not a commons is not consistent with the standard usage of the term, at least as it used by academics and public policy analysts.

It's a mistake to posit altruism and the market as the only alternative institutions --- the Balinese example does not rely on altruism, it's consistent with a game theoretic model with rational actors.

As to the benefits of introducing market-mechanisms into the internet, I would pose the following question: how many viruses, worms, etc. would we expect to see released in an environment where there was a potential monetary payoff for such actions?

Enron made a huge mess of the electricity markets in California, partly through fraud and deceit, but mainly because the people who designed the rules of the market didn't think the problem through. Let's not repeat that mistake with the Internet based on some theoretical ideas about the efficiency of markets.

blog-O-rama

Re:definition of "commons"

[keyslammer]

The statement that If you have an institution managing a common resource, then it's not a commons is not consistent with the standard usage of the term, at least as it used by academics and public policy analysts.

Perhaps not, but the definition that you have offered is not consistent with what most people seem to mean when we talk about "the tragedy of the commons". Specifically, we are talking about resources that are "open access" - like a field for grazing - in which it benefits every player to try to get the most for himself, regardless of the fact that their collective action is not in anyone's best interest.

As to the benefits of introducing market-mechanisms into the internet, I would pose the following question: how many viruses, worms, etc. would we expect to see released in an environment where there was a potential monetary payoff for such actions?

First of all, there are already market mechanisms on the internet. My company is right now in the process of switching ISPs, discarding a more expensive alternative for what we believe will be a cheaper one. Many believe that introducing these mechanisms into the underlying protocols will create further incentive to build more bandwidth. If you are concerned about this creating an incentive for bandwidth providers to engineer worms to cause their customers to use more of their bandwidth, I would point out that there are a huge number of cases where customers are already being charged based on bandwidth consumed and there is no evidence that bandwidth providers are doing these kinds of things now.

Enron made a huge mess of the electricity markets in California, partly through fraud and deceit, but mainly because the people who designed the rules of the market didn't think the problem through.

Not because they (the California Government) didn't think it through (they clearly did plenty of thinking) but because in fact they didn't deregulate the electric market. They placed price caps on the consumer end while allowing energy producers to raise their prices, they forbade the production of new power plants, they forbade the formation of contracts between producers and carriers and then when the whole thing went to hell they turned around and blamed the companies.

Please do not cite the California electric markets as an example of free markets (and don't cite the new Russia either - hard to do business when you are still stuck between the Mafia and the Bureaucrats).

A question...

[ArcSecond]

Okay, so tell me: what is the difference between a Taoist and an enlightened Machiavellian?

Does it matter if someone consistently does something altruistic for selfish or selfless reasons? The outcome is the same.

If you really want to get into the motives, then why not just say that acting in the best interest of the commons is itself "selfish" because it is a safer strategy for a better outcome. Sure, you can play the short-term selfish game and come out ahead (maybe), but you will be surrounded by people who resent your success. The lesson in competition is not "improve performance" but rather "sabotage your competition".

Altruism is the reverse: by supporting your "competition" (called "complimentors" in the newspeak) you may risk losing an advantage (as in the prisoner's dilemma) in the short term, but by employing simple strategies like "tit-for-tat" in an environment that is biased towards altruism will eventually lead to maximal outcomes for the population taken as a whole (the "rising tide floats all boats" analogy, here properly applied, for once). It really is inevitable, because the feedback of the "game" allows the participants to learn what will work best for them.

In a human social context, you would hope that that learning would move from the purely intellectual to the personal. If you can learn to do good for selfish reasons, it might occur to you that doing good has value in and of itself.

Re:A question...

[Garen]

It's true that in competition, sabotage offers an advantage -- but typically only short-term. As is demonstrated by the prisoner's dilemma, social groups prefer cooperation even when it is in their best interest not to do so, and often construct mechanisms to thwart such parasitical behavior.

But I don't believe people behave in such a way for any calculated, game-theoretical reasons. One explanation may be that we simply have some innate quality that lends us to cooperative behavior because it has survival value.

Another may be that it's simply because people often have a grandeur vision of outcomes: we attempt to seek out the most optimal solution to problems, even if they have little chance of success.

Both of those seem pretty plausible to me, however I don't think people need to learn to "do good for selfish reasons," because they're already doing so, whether they think they are or not. Whether they're doing things for bad or "good," is also not relevant -- as merely doing anything "good" implies some kind of ethical and moral value system -- of which there is no consensus of what that should be.

Altruism

[jbl81]

Altruism is not the way we keep air and water clean. Air and water quality are public goods (in the economics sense of the term), and keeping them clean is a collective action problem. It's straightforward game theory to show that the rational choice, in a system where you have no reason to trust people, is to make sure you don't get screwed before you have a chance to "get yours".

The way people and governments get out of a collective action problem (like an arms race, or like EMU monetary/fiscal policy, etc) is not through altruism, but through formal cooperation. In order to ensure that everyone cooperates, you need to (1) clearly define what constitutes cooperation, (2) make it transparent (obvious) who is cooperating and who is not, and (3) decide on mechanisms for enforcement.

Yep, its a OC-3 (a bit OT)

[da_anarchist]

A quick traceroute to yahoo from my Cornell Resnet connection shows that we do in fact have an OC-3 connection to the Internet. The connection to Internet 2 is probably many times faster.

I would give you all five of my mod points

[BeBoxer]

if I could.

I think whoever wrote this article is far removed from the real world. They are finding theoretical problems with the routing protocols we would like to be running. As you pointed out, pretty much the entire backbone is using BGP4 to make routing decisions. And BGP4 doesn't really have any measure of how congested links are, nor how long the latency is. The basic measure of BGP4 is how many different providers (called AS's or Autonomous Systems) a packet might have to traverse.

Hmmm, the router says, is the best route thru C&W->AT&T->Bob's_ISP or just Level3->Bob's_ISP? I'll pick the two hop route. Sure, we all do some manual tuning, where the engineer says "I know the L3->Bob link is slow, so I'll make it look like L3->L3->Bob", but BGP4 is fundamentally a really stupid protocol. In theory. In practice, it works fine almost all of the time.

The most telling quote from the article is this:


They also found that doubling the capacity of the system would provide the same benefits as a managed system.


No shit Sherlock. I could've told you that five years ago. Why do you think QoS is still facing an uphill struggle? It's far cheaper and easier to just keep cranking up the bandwidth than to replace BGP4 with something smarter, or to deploy QoS protocols Internet wide.

Don't get me wrong, I think they are doing great research. It's good to try and figure out what might go wrong with next-gen protocols before the get deployed. But I don't think they are talking about problems on todays Internet.

Commercial issues

[mparaz]

The "science" article conveniently neglects the commercial aspect of peering. Since Internet backbones are mostly commercial businesses, that is an important aspect.

On the opposite of Internap are the big carriers who don't allow peering but charge everyone. Selfish? Maybe, but they sunk in the capital.

Ah, I miss CU

[Splurk]

High above Cayuga's waters
There's an awful smell.
Maybe it's Cayuga's waters
Maybe it's Cornell.

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[Anonymous Coward]

From the FAQ on this site:

It's like the bootleg CD theory. They are all over Manhattan, but you just shouldn't buy them. Because if you buy them, then you'll run up the cost of CDs in the future. It's like stealing. Someone's gonna pay, and it will be the consumer.

Looks like the RIAA should have paid all her debt just for this one...

Don't these backbone routers use BGP?

[gpoul]

There's also a story about this at CNET.

Maybe I got that wrong, but aren't all the routers they're talking about using BGP to decide their routes?

So don't they decide which is the best link based on AS length and load balance if the length is equal on multiple links?

How can this article be true if basically the admins and the architecture of the net determine a route and not the router itself?

AFAIK no normal backbone router decides the best path based on some obscure metrics.

Re:Don't these backbone routers use BGP?

[chief-dot]

Considering that large network providers have a handful (if not 1) ASN then I'd say that EBGP isn't the only routing protocol on backbone links.

EBGP gets you from one AS to another...something else needs to get you through a providers network, this is done with an interior routing protocol, IBGP, OSPF, etc.

Your point seems fair though - I'm also under the understanding that layer 2 and 3 multipath load balancing is fairly widely used.

Routing protocols aren't overly complicated due to the requirement for robustness as well as making a route selection as fast as possible so I suppose that mistakes will happen from time to time. Having said that, it's cool to think that research such as this could lead to a new generation of routing protocol.

Cars don't expire!

[Anonymous Coward]

Staying three car lengths as traffic concentrates at a hub limits the physical bandwidth of the system. Cars from the feeder streets would back up earlier so that cars streaming in from outside the "3-car" zone would be excluded entirely. Of course I try to keep more than three lengths in front when I drive. (Tech note: Japanese electronic companies are pushing hard to introduce transceivers to keep constant intervehicle spacing on highways.)

I think the analogous constraint for routers would be "don't send so many bits."

Dijkstra's SPF, MPLS, Offline Weight Optimization

[sireenmalik]

Maybe I did not understand the article but chances are that maybe i did!

For distributed routing every router takes its own decision. SPF is used. Assume OSPF now. Routers
basically set weights on its interfaces/ports. There are two types of weights: static and dynamic.For static weights there is nothing much a router can do except obey (a lazy) administrator's decision.Dynamic weight setting gives a router some freedom. It may set its interface weights depending upon the available bandwidth. It could even penalize congestion by choosing very high weights for loads more than say 95% of the link capacity.

But there is a small problem commonly known as "osciallation". Consider two links A and B connected to a router. Router finds out that A is congested so it sets a high weight on interface A. This leads to shift of traffic from link A to link B. At some point link B will become loaded. Now the router sets interface B weight high.
Question: where will the traffic of link B go now? Right. To link A!! This is oscillation.

MPLE/IP:
In MPLS/IP networks it is possible to do load balancing based on the utilization of the links. The traffic being virtual-circuit would use the same path for the duration of its existance as LSP. No unnecessary oscillations here.

Offline Weight Optimization:
Bandwidth is the resource. Customers produce demand. The objective function, for example, could be to minimize Maximum Link Utilization. There are some constraints, for example, total demand will not exceed the link capacity, etc etc. How this global (entire network) optimization problem is solved is not a big deal, the big deal, however, is the result. The solution provides a set of weights which when set on the interfaces leads to a load-balanced and better utilized network.

Point : Humans maybe greedy but mathematics is generous!

Slammer

[Whitecloud]

The effect on Slammer is still being felt through routers being compromised, and its weeks later. A serious router exploit could cause some major roadblocks on the information superhighway.

That's totally wrong, especially on the internet.

[fireboy1919]

What you're really relying on is the selfishness of the hardware. If the hardware itself did something different, then the people that bought them would live with that. Case in point is ethernet devices.

Each of these has an altruistic collision avoidance method: when a collision happens, stop sending and wait a random amount of time before sending again. A selfish ethernet device would always immediately attempt to send under the assumption that the other device would be waiting, and it would get to go first. But of course, that's very bad for the network, so it's not done.

The fact that we've got selfish routers is not a sign that they're selfish, per se, but that selfish routing is somewhere near the most effective a means of communication that they could think of at the time when they where invented.

Altruism is evil

[Xipe66]

Altruism is a code of ethics which hold the welfare of others as the standard of "good", and self-sacrifice as the only moral action. The unstated premise of the doctrine of altruism is that all relationships among men involve sacrifice. This leaves one with the false choice between maliciously exploiting the other person (forcing them to be sacrificed) or being "moral" and offering oneself up as the sacrificial victim. Why is the second considered good? Apparently because Jesus said so.

But the dichotomy of sacrifice or exploit is false. Between rational people, there should never be any sacrifice involved nor conflict of interest. The true moral interaction between two people should be an interaction as traders - trading value for value in a mutually agreed on and beneficial manner.

This is not to say that benevolence and good will are immoral. It is only sacrifice that is immoral, and being generally benevolent is not a sacrifice but a benefit and a virtue. The difference is that to be "good" according to Altruism, one must hand out blank checks to all who claim a need; while according to Egoism, ones own life is one's ultimate standard of value against which all acts must be analyzed.
--Importance of Philosophy.com

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[Ed Avis]

My reaction to this story is 'well, duh'. If it costs you nothing extra, of course you will choose a route for your traffic without considering the effects on others. It's like the classic analogy of a train seat which has room enough for two: a third passenger coming along is likely to squeeze onto the end of the seat, squashing the other two, because *for him* it is better than standing.

The answer is for routing costs to accurately reflect the contention for resources. If a particular route gets crowded, charge slightly more for sending packets down it. Routers can negotiate in real time to set prices and find the cheapest route for their data. Quality of service guarantees can be implemented by purchasing bandwidth (or options to use bandwidth) in advance.

You won't eliminate selfish behaviour, the way to keep things running smoothly is to make sure people pay for the cost of the resources they use (and no more). Then it will be in their own interests to consider the effect on others, and to avoid overusing already congested routes.

Re:I'm confused too!

[chief-dot]

Are you quite sure that issues such as a whole network of routers constantly jumping from one route to another (and back again) is something that you'll often find in the real world these days?

Further, while you'd like to see more randomness in routing, I'd like to see more work put into correct path selection.

routing algorithm failure = selfish?

[chief-dot]

I don't think the author of the article was right to make the alleged issues with routing algorithms look like "selfishness" amongst (presumably) network administrators.

The point that the author briefly touched on regarding a routing algorithm to take into regard the effect of adding extra load onto a particular network path was interesting but I don't really see the point. For example, OSPF (Dijkstra algorithm) will know that a 10Mb link at 50% capacity is a more attractive option compared to a 2Mb link at 0% capacity (or a 100Mb link at 98% capacity). Calculating what would happen to the network after your, say, 1Mb of capacity requirements are loaded onto a paticular path seems largely useless as the most attractive route is already going to be selected... Feel free to enlighten me on this.

This theory seems flawed....

[dfj225]

If every router picks the "fastest" route based on ping, then shouldn't the internet be operating at the fastest speed possible? If the "fastest" routes are already being used by the routers, then, technically, there will be nothing faster. The way I see it, its not like the routers all choose the same router just because it is "better" (like a driver might choose a highway), but which ever route gets the packet there the fastest. I would think it would automatically choose some routes with less traffic, not just the high-bandwidth/high-traffic ones. Besides, when I boot up CounterStrike, I would be pretty upset if some random internet router decided to send my packets around the world 3 times before they get to their destination just because it would be "better for the internet as a whole". :-P

Re:If there's anything the Internet has taught me.

[orkysoft]

Apparently, moderators don't know what

j/k (just kidding) ;-) (wink wink, nudge nudge)

means...

I didn't even mention the B-word! ;-)

Sounds familiar

[Strigiform]

Does the phrase "Tragedy of the commons" ring a bell?

Last Post!

[alpg]

We knew from experience that the essence of communal computing, as
supplied by remote-access, time-shared machines, is not just to type
programs into a terminal instead of a keypunch, but to encourage close
communication.
-- Dennis Ritchie

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...