Re: reopening ECN bugreport/netbase
T.Pospisek's MailLists wrote:
> > But anyway - I agree that Debian should not be too conservative
> > with regard to new networking technologies, so disabling ECN by
> > default is not something I'd like to see happen. Give the user some
> > short explanation and let him make the decision himself, I'd say.
>
> OK. How exactly should this be worded:
[...]
Well let's use the Linux kernel's description to start with:
CONFIG_INET_ECN
Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) allows routers to notify
clients about network congestion, resulting in fewer dropped packets
and increased network performance. This option adds ECN support to
the Linux kernel, as well as a sysctl (/proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_ecn)
which allows ECN support to be disabled at runtime.
Note that, on the Internet, there are many broken firewalls which
refuse connections from ECN-enabled machines, and it may be a while
before these firewalls are fixed. Until then, to access a site behind
such a firewall (some of which are major sites, at the time of this
writing) you will have to disable this option, either by saying N now
or by using the sysctl.
One of the strong points of Debian is that it leaves the user in
control of his system. That's the main reason I'm suggesting to leave
the decision whether or not to use ECN up to the user.
> Moreover, what about bootfloppies. In case there will be
> bootfloppies, do you want to bother the user with such questions? Or
> do you want to have two versions of the kernel - one for the
> bootfloppies and one for the "maintree"?
I'm not familiar with bootfloppies internals. Is it possible to disable
ECN during initialization using sysctl in some way? It probably is...
just to be safe.
> And what is *exactly* the problem of displaying:
>
> "ECN Disabled - Edit /etc/network/options to enable it"
>
> in the bootmessages and let the user switch it on if he wants?
It's just my opinion, but I feel that this is more conservative than we
necessarely have to be. Promoting superior technologies, when
available, is not helped with a conservative default, I think.
But then again, I can live with such a message, that's for sure ;-)
Reply to: