[R-C] WG name (Re: Charter -> congestion avoidance vs. congestion control?)

[Harald Alvestrand]

It's an old IETF meme that if you want lots of people to comment, one 
should start discussing the name of something (protocol, WG, it doesn't 
matter).

I've got a page on the site for this subject:

http://rtp-congestion.alvestrand.com/bof-planning-page/naming

I've added IRCC to the suggestion list.

On 08/07/2012 09:10 PM, Mo Zanaty (mzanaty) wrote:
> I'm glad John mentioned the proposed WG name.
> - I think IRCC (Interactive RTP Congestion Control) may be better than RMCAT.
> - Congestion control seems to have become the more common general term, with congestion avoidance often associated with a particular phase/state of overall TCP congestion control. We're not working on TCP, but readers of our charter and drafts will likely be well-versed in TCP CC/CA.
> - "Media" and "Techniques" seem superfluous. What RTP payloads are we trying to exclude by explicitly saying "Media"?
> - Interactive is missing, since we are explicitly excluding non-interactive RTP (e.g. highly buffered streaming applications).
>
> So I would prefer the WG name to be IRCC (Interactive RTP Congestion Control), and the charter to talk in terms of congestion control. We will obviously have a control loop, and its time constant may be short or long, depending on the final solution(s), but it's still a control loop at any timescale.
>
> Mo
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: rtp-congestion-bounces at alvestrand.no [mailto:rtp-congestion-bounces at alvestrand.no] On Behalf Of John Leslie
> Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2012 8:35 AM
> To: Harald Alvestrand
> Cc: rtp-congestion at alvestrand.no
> Subject: Re: [R-C] Charter -> congestion avoidance vs. congestion control?
>
> Harald Alvestrand <harald at alvestrand.no> wrote:
>> When I first learned networking ~30 years ago, "congestion avoidance"
>> was the term used when you managed things so that congestion at the
>> media level could never happen (token ring, ATM), while "congestion
>> control" was the whole area of what you did either to avoid congestion
>> or to deal with it once it happened.
>     30-years? A newcomer!!
>
>     IMHO, both terms are kind of accidental -- congestion can only be
> prevented if you know the entire path a packet will follow. "Congestion
> control" is the term applied to the AIMD algorithm for TCP: IMHO to
> indicate a control loop. But we could just as well have talked of it
> as "congestion avoidance" since what it actually did is avoid sending
> data into a path believed to be congested.
>
>     "Congestion control" has always struck me as an optimistic name --
> but then, _all_ names are optimistic! IMHO, what we will do for
> congestion-management in RMCAT will look even less like a tight control
> loop.
>
>> So I'd prefer "congestion control", since congestion is a fact of life;
>> we're dealing with it, not avoiding it at all cost - but I'm a bit
>> old-fashioned.
>     Congestion which drives up delay will _need_ to be avoided in RMCAT.
> "Congestion avoidance" to me has never meant "at all cost", but YMMV.
> Myself, I'm more sensitive to any suggestion that RMCAT can "control"
> overall congestion. We're going to find ourselves at the mercy of and
> competing TCP streams (which will always try to fill the pipe); and
> if we have any way to "control" them, it's not obvious to me.
>
>     But perhaps the final argument is our name:
>
> RTP Media Congestion Avoidance Techniques (RMCAT)
>
> --
> John Leslie <john at jlc.net>
> _______________________________________________
> Rtp-congestion mailing list
> Rtp-congestion at alvestrand.no
> http://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/rtp-congestion

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