On Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 10:10:44PM +0100, Anthony G. Atkielski wrote: > The dumb authors, I think, are those who built Linux implementations > that doggedly attempt to negotiate ECN and are unprepared for cases > where it does not work, even though it's unreasonable to assume that the > entire world is equipped to handle ECN or that all other hosts will > cheerfully ignore the setting of bits that are supposed to be zero. In > this context, Linux is beginning to remind me of Netscape in the early > days. What Linux implemented was specifically what was specified by RFC 3168, no more no less. This RFC was in fact designed to deal with hosts that were not equipped for ECN. The issue is whether or not intermediate hosts are justified in dropping packets just because some bits that were reserved for future use are no longer zero. I would argue no. In fact, while many or most hosts do not support ECN, very few errant firewalls and/or load balancing boxes were dropping packets that support ECN. Firmware updates have been available for over two years to fix those firewalls are broken, including no doubt the ones used by ISOC. It's just that the ISOC firewall admins simply haven't had the wit to upgrade their firewall firmware. Pretty much all of the commercial websites were fixed a long, long, LONG time ago. - Ted