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New Router Manages Flows, Not Packets

An anonymous reader writes "A new router, designed by one of the creators of ARPANET, manages flows of packets instead of only managing individual packets. The router recognizes packets that are following the first and sends them along faster than if it had to route them as individuals. When overloaded, the router can make better choices of which packets to drop. 'Indeed, during most of my career as a network engineer, I never guessed that the queuing and discarding of packets in routers would create serious problems. More recently, though, as my Anagran colleagues and I scrutinized routers during peak workloads, we spotted two serious problems. First, routers discard packets somewhat randomly, causing some transmissions to stall. Second, the packets that are queued because of momentary overloads experience substantial and nonuniform delays, significantly reducing throughput (TCP throughput is inversely proportional to delay). These two effects hinder traffic for all applications, and some transmissions can take 10 times as long as others to complete.'"

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Well duh by Em+Emalb · · Score: 5, Funny

    Damn right, they manage flows. It keeps the tubes from clogging.

    Duuuurrrrrr.

    --
    Sent from your iPad.
  2. Re:Pretty girls make things go faster by NotBornYesterday · · Score: 4, Funny

    What do you mean? 99% of the internet's packets are pretty girls.

    --
    I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
  3. Re:Net neutrality anyone? by babyrat · · Score: 4, Funny

    QoS isn't a bad thing, but the user should be in control of it

    Exactly! That way MY packets (not some of them, ALL OF THEM) need to be prioritized.

    Kind of reminds me of the good old days when I had access to print queue priorities. No-one ever understood why my printouts always came out first...I maintained I was just lucky.