On Fri, 19 Nov 1999, Glenn M. McMahon wrote:
> For instance, say a user wants to go to www.microsoft.com, the router may
> choose Serial 1 as the path but it will keep that path for the entire
> conversation as opposed to shooting a packet down serial 1, next packet
> down serial 2 and so on.
Of course, what happens when users packets start arriving at microsoft.com
out of sequence because one of the links is farther? You end up with
something like 1 3 4 5 2 6 8 9 7 instead of a nice in-sequence 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9. This can create it's own set of complications as I understand it. The
reason that many vendors don't even support perpacket balancing between
multiple paths is due to the packet reordering that must occur on the
receiving end. While literal throughput may be higher using this method,
latency induced by the receiving host having to reorder packets (and
possibly even request that they be sent again) would seem to negate the
extra throughput by causing increased user visible latency and packet
retransmissions...
Just my .02 cents on the matter..
-- Tim
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* Timothy M. Wolfe, Chief Network Engineer *
* ClipperNet Corporation / It's a wireless world *
* tim@clipper.net 800.338.2629 x 402 *
* Sufficient for today = Inadequate for tomorrow *
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