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by scott_s 5158 days ago
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.
1 comments
nkohari 5158 days ago
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.
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scott_s 5158 days ago
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.
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nkohari 5158 days ago
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).

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