Re: hotmail not dealing with ECN

James Sutherland
2001-01-26T11:41:19Z

On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, David S. Miller wrote:

>
> Matti Aarnio writes:
> > But could you nevertheless consider supplying a socket option for it ?
> > By all means default it per sysctl, but allow clearing/setting by
> > program too.
>
> No, because then people will do the wrong thing.
>
> They will create intricate "ECN black lists" and make
> their apps set the socket option based upon whether
> a site is in the black list or not.
>
> This is wrong, and allows the problematic sites to continue to be
> delinquent.
>
> If these sites gradually become more and more disconnected from
> the rest of the internet, they will fix their kit. Other schemes
> so far have been met with reluctance on the part of these sites.
>
> I do not want to condone mechanisms which allow people to make
> crutches for these broken sites ad infinitum.

A delayed retry without ECN might be a good compromise...

Every single connection to ECN-broken sites would work as normal - it
would just take an extra few seconds. Instead of "Hotmail doesn't
work!" it becomes "Hrm... Hotmail is fscking slow, but Yahoo is fine. I'll
use Yahoo". A few million of those, and suddenly Hotmail isn't so hot...

James.