3 ms·
> The measurements revealed that protocol designers can no longer assume that the Internet is transparent when designing a TCP extension; and no TCP extension c
by loup-vaillant 13y ago
> The measurements revealed that protocol designers can no longer assume that the Internet is transparent when designing a TCP extension; and no TCP extension can assume that a single field of the TCP header will reach the destination without any modification.
The Net Neutrality situation is worse than I thought.
- mhandley 13y agoWe were really surprised by what we found - especially just how prevalent middleboxes that are aware of and modify TCP packets actually are. The results are a couple of years old now, so things have probably got even worse. But that's mostly separate from the network neutrality debate. You don't need to modify packets to shape them - our methodology would not have revealed shaping.
- throwaway7767 13y agoI think the network neutrality debate is a lot wider than just "Don't shape traffic". It's about keeping the internet a dumb transport, and "smart" (what a misnomer) middleboxes very much go against that goal. Of course, as part of my job, I manage several of these boxes. I flagged these concerns when they were bought, but was overruled. So I guess we're relying on the good graces of the vendor to update their software to support MPTCP and any future modifications, otherwise these boxes become expensive doorstops.