Re: 2.4.x Kernel, ECN And Problem Websites
Quoting Daniel Stone <daniel@kabuki.openfridge.net>:
> 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.
I would have expected something more intelligent from a "Linux
kernel developer". ECN is COMPLETELY backward-compatible, and the bits
it uses are reserved for it. The RFC's instruct these reserved bits to
be ignored if the device does not support ECN. When firewalls silently
drop packets just because they have the ECN bits set, those firewalls
are broken, not Linux or ECN. In short: it's not our problem. I wish
people would stop being so sensationalist about ECN. linux-kernel has
been tracking delinquent sites for a few months now, and DaveM resolved
to turn ECN on on vger, which would effictively cut off hotmail users
from it since hotmail is (was?) one such broken site. All of a sudden
Slashdot posts a FUD-filled article claiming ECN is enabled by default,
isn't backward-compatible, and breaks things. I bet that's where this
thread came from.
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