Hi folks, The next Worcester Linux Users' Group (WLUG) meeting will be held this Wednesday. This month we will have Jim Gettys from Bell Labs talk about Internet buffer bloat. This is the talk that has been rescheduled from April. Note that there has been a room change to a larger room right down the hall from our regular location. Wednesday, October 9, 7:00 - 9:00 PM WPI Campus Center, Hagglund Room 301 The Campus Center is building #7 on the campus map [1], and the Hagglund Room is room 301 on the Campus Center building floorplan [2]. [1] http://www.wpi.edu/about/visitors/campusmap.html [2] http://www.wpi.edu/Admin/CC/Floorplans/37678.htm "Internet buffer bloat, by Jim Gettys (Bell Labs) VOIP and teleconferencing often perform much more poorly on today's Internet than the Internet of a decade ago, despite great gains in bandwidth. Lots of fiber, cheap memory, smart hardware, variability of wireless goodput, changes in web browser behaviour, changes in TCP implementations, and a focus on benchmarking Internet performance solely by bandwidth, and engineer's natural reluctance to drop packets have conspired to encourage papering over problems by adding buffers; each of which may introduce latency when filled. The mistaken quest to never drop packets has destroyed interactivity under load, and often results in actual higher packet loss, as TCP's congestion avoidance algorithms have been defeated by these buffers. The lessons of the "RED manifesto" of 1997 have been forgotten or never learned by a new generation of engineers." Wednesday, October 9, 7:00 - 9:00 PM WPI Campus Center, Hagglund Room 301 Afterwards, we will go out for pizza. See you there, Chuck President, Worcester Linux Users' Group http://www.wlug.org/