Re: [tcpm] RFC 1323: Timestamps option

David -

I don't have any feedback about *when* to negotiate timestamps, but I 
do have some feedback
about how the RTO should be estimated when timestamps are used.  Just 
as something
to include in a revision of RFC 1323...

Regards,
- Sally
http://www.icir.org/floyd/

Here is some old email of mine on this:

> To: mallman@icir.org
> cc: "Ethan Blanton" <eblanton@cs.purdue.edu>,
>     "Aaron Falk" <falk@isi.edu>, "Ted Faber" <faber@isi.edu>,
>     touch@isi.edu, "Scott Bradner" <sob@harvard.edu>
> Bcc:
> From: Sally Floyd <floyd@icir.org>
> Subject: Re: Mark Allman: would this fly?
> Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:45:18 -0700
> Sender: floyd@cougar.icir.org
>
> Mark -
>
> >> It is worth noting that if timestamps are being used, with the
> >> currently-specified time constant for estimating the average RTT and
> >> variance, then the first thing that needs to be done is to change 
> the
> >> time constant so that the average RTT and the variance aren't being
> >> estimated over a small fraction of a window of data (as is possible
> >> when timestamps are used with current parameters).  (Unless this has
> >> already been fixed in recent standards, and I just missed it...)
> >
> >I don't think this has been fixed.  And, I don't see this potential 
> i-d
> >as the place to fix it.  I wanted this to be an alternative response 
> to
> >spurious timeouts, not some general RTO change.  Does that make sense?
>
> It makes sense.  Except that if in fact the average and variance are
> being estimated over a small fraction of a window size, because
> the TCP connection is using timestamps and has a moderate-to-large
> congestion window, then the estimated variance might be very small
> (because it is measured over RTTs calculated essentially from the
> most recent N packets, for N < cwnd, and the burstiness for rtts for
> the most recent fraction of a cwnd might be quite small).
>
> So in that situation, increasing the multiple of the variance might
> have almost no effect on the RTO, because the variance might be
> unrealistically small when calculated only over this small time
> scale.  And changing the weight for estimating the rtt average and
> variance to make sure that the average RTT and variance are estimated
> from RTTs calculated over a period of several rtts, might make your
> technique much more powerful, by making the calculated variance
> much more interesting and useful.  Worth noting, at any rate.  IMHO.
>
> - Sally

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