[caf]

  The solution is for the end user to intervene, and tell all
  their applications to not be such pigs, and use uTP instead
  of TCP. Then they’ll have the same transfer rates they
  started out with, plus have low latency when browsing the
  web and teleconferencing, and not screw up their ISP when
  they’re doing bulk data transfers. 

That still doesn't address the problem when you have many users behind the same queue, some of whom care only about throughput and not latency. You need a scheme which will work when all of those users are acting selfishly.

[scott_s]

My thought was more fundamental than that: any solution which involves asking users to request different transport protocols is not going to solve the problem. There are far more users who have no idea what a "transport protocol" is than those who do.

With that said, I enjoyed the post. It's an interesting problem, and I do find the base idea attractive: allowing applications to opt to be background traffic.

[nkohari]

It wouldn't (at least in my understanding) be the user that would choose, it would be the application. WoW for example would optimize for latency, whereas BitTorrent would optimize for throughput.

[scott_s]

Correct, but Bram's argument (as I understand it) was that the users would put pressure on the application developers to opt to be background traffic.

[nkohari]

Two nearly-universal truths about users that suggest solutions: they're both rare, and usually wrong. :)

It's more likely that users will state the problem -- such as, "I want to be able to run WoW and BitTorrent at the same time." From there, the software developers would determine the solution (optimization for latency vs. throughput).

[bramcohen]

They can have their throughput without running a denial of service on their net connection. If you assume that they'll DOS themselves for the fun of it anyway, then I can't help you.

[caf]

For a user that cares only about throughput and not about latency, it's not a DOS.

[paulsutter]

Backing a queue up to seconds of depth doesn't increase throughput.

Most of the bandwidth contention is at the edge, right at your DSL connection, so any battle among network connections is a battle among your own usage at any given moment.

Separately, bittorrent is not a latency-sensitive app, it's throughput sensitive, and uTP was designed for bittorent.