Programmer Humor @programming.dev carrylex @lemmy.world 1 mo. ago

Packet Loss

Found this in the depths of my storage. Not sure where its from but might improve the day of some people ^^

22 comments

Hello, would you like to hear a TCP joke?

Edit: since no one is biting here’s the full joke

"Hi, I'd like to hear a TCP joke."
"Hello, would you like to hear a TCP joke?"
"Yes, I'd like to hear a TCP joke."
"Ok, I'll tell you a TCP joke."
"Ok, I will hear a TCP joke."
"Are you ready to hear a TCP joke?"
"Yes, I am ready to hear a TCP joke."
"Ok, I am about to send the TCP joke. It will last 10 seconds, it has two characters, it does not have a setting, it ends with a punchline."
"Ok, I am ready to get your TCP joke that will last 10 seconds, has two characters, does not have an explicit setting, and ends with a punchline."
"I'm sorry, your connection has timed out. Hello, would you like to hear a TCP joke?"
- would you like to hear the udp joke? you might not get it, but I don't really care that much
  
  This was better than mine
- Sure, but we need to shake hands first.
  
  I will now start transmitting the TCP joke.
- H ll wou d l k o h ar a UDP j ke?
- Sorry I only do udp, but I won’t tell you that
To be fair, because of window size management it only takes 1% packet loss to cause a catastrophic drop in speed.

Packet loss in TCP is only ever handled as a signal of extreme network congestion. It was never intended to go over a lossy link like wifi.
- Doesn't wifi have its own retrial protocol? It's been a long time since I've read the standard, but I think it's almost lossless from the POV of TCP.
  
  I believe so, yes. Every 802.11 frame is effectively ACK'd. Makes a mockery of OSI layering, but so does everything else.
  
  None built in from what I recall. That was from back in 2011, so it's possible things changed since.
  
  Reading through, it looks like retries do exist, but remember that duplicate packets are treated as a window reset, so it's possible that transmission succeeded but the ack was lost.
  
  I remember the project demos from the course though - one team implemented some form of fast retry on two laptops and had one guy walk out and away. With regular wifi he didn't even make it to the end of the hall before the video dropped out. With their custom stack he made it out of the building before it went.
  
  I'll need to dig through to find the name of what they did.
- On the other side of the spectrum packet loss is a key feature of some of the layers below tcp, like path-mtu discovery.
Found this in the depths of my storage. Not sure where its from but might improve the day of some people ^^

I also remember someone posting that article
- This is wild. Didn't knew gangs do shit like this.
- Not a bad price if the service is any good
Network monitoring engineers: explains for the umpteenth time that a node reporting down isn't just a single dropped packet
- Geez...we all have learning experiences but I feel node down and packet dropped should be a clear distinction in the mind of anyone in IT...but people will surprise you
It's actually panic in both
- Packets are lost all the time. Especially when uploading or downloading.
- May I interest you in using unwrap_or instead of unwrap
Mr Krab there surely doesn't have the same customers I have, if he's so relaxed

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