Re: sysctl should disable ECN by default
On 05-Sep-01, 16:35 (CDT), Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 05 Sep 2001, T.Pospisek's MailLists wrote:
> >
> > But tell me *one* thing:
> >
> > Why is it so hard to change a few lines and have the default be
> > set to *off* and let whoever feels like it enable it?
>
> Because apparently Xu feels equally strong about not allowing someone else's
> irresponsability (the router firmware writer's) to force him to disable
> something he believes is right (or force him to change the default kernel
> behaviour against upstream wishes, or whatever) ?
1. The default kernel behavior is that ECN is completely disabled.
2. While I happen to agree that ECN is a good thing, and that routers
that screw it up *are* broken and violating old RFCs (reserved is
reserved, not "let's zero it out 'cause we don't know what it means"), I
can't help but think that if someone's first experience with Debian is
that the network install fails silently because ECN is enabled and some
router between him and the archive is broken then we have failed to meet
our (implied?)commitment in the Social Contract. All the newbie is going
to know is that it doesn't work. Boy, I'm glad we've made our political
point.
3. ECN-broken routers are not equivalent to non-compliant IMAP
clients. I don't know about you, but I don't have control over the
path my packets take over the internet. If there's a broken router in
that path, there's not a whole lot I can do about it. And for that
matter, there are lots of clients and servers with code to accommodate
broken-but-popular servers and clients (respectively).
Steve
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