Re: [PATCH] tcp: don't allow unfair congestion control to be built without warning

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2006 14:24:02 -0700

> Only some (very few) have any bad consequences. So the typical
> distribution should be able to switch with most available for everyone,
> and only a few needing special privileges.

I would strongly disagree as we've had several OOPS'er class bugs in
the less frequently used algorithms.

I stand by my position that an administrator's wish to do this is
quite valid.

It's bad enough that people are all over us for the default algorithm
we have choosen, so it'd be extremely irresponsible and even worse if
we allowed users to select any of the other "research" algorithms for
their TCP connections by default just because those modules happened
to be configured into the kernel.

This userspace convenience argument holds zero water.

Provide a way for the administrator to control the situation fully,
and choose a sane default which errs on the side of caution for the
sake of internet stability.