Re: 2.4.x Kernel, ECN And Problem Websites
On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 10:16:30PM +1000, Daniel Stone wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2001 at 01:52:09PM +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
> > Previously Daniel Stone wrote:
> > > Why enable ECN at all, if all it effectively does is break stuff? AFAIK,
> > > there's no systems out "in the wild" that actually use ECN to make a
> > > difference. All that's happening is that peoples' systems are being broken.
> > > Which is sub-optimal.
> >
> > With that attitude we would still be using 8bit systems with black&white
> > monitors.
>
> It may be a minor catch-22, but ECN is currently so broken, that only power
> users should be using it, as the rest will just continue flooding the
> netfilter list with "Netfilter breaks all my websites!". [OK, ECN isn't
> broken, the routers are, I know, but same effect. ECN breaks stuff]. So, if
> you're smart enough to know that you want ECN, and smart enough to
> understand the consequences, you should be compiling your own kernel.
Uh, no, ECN is not broken at all. What is broken are all of these
routers that depend on reserved bits in the TCP/IP packets. ECN itself
does not break things, it merely shows other things that are broken.
If we left everything to "you have to be smart enough", then let's just
leave out the entire linux kernel, most of the software in Debian, and
go for a minimum cygnus install. Let's just ditch all non-i386
architectures. Hell, let's get rid of everything that might potentially
break your system, unless you are smart enough to use it. You know,
things like X that can fry a monitor, or mkfs that might trash your
harddrive.
> No way should we be pushing ECN to the masses. It should stay in the domain
> of people like DaveM, until routers get fixed.
If we did that, then maybe 4 people would be using it (there's not many
people in the same class as davem).
This needs to be pushed to the masses. If we watited for all of these
vendors to fix their equipment, and all of these corporations to apply
those fixes, before spreading ECN, then DaveM might be the only person
who ever uses it, and nothing will get fixed.
That fact that things get broken, and people complain, is one reason
that things get fixed.
--
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/ Ben Collins -- ...on that fantastic voyage... -- Debian GNU/Linux \
` bcollins@debian.org -- bcollins@openldap.org -- bcollins@linux.com '
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