[PLUG] Looking at bandwidth optimization schemes...

[Michael C. Robinson]

What is the advantage of a fixed packet size as used in ATM?

For real time computing would you only accept inbound connections
at a certain rate of speed for certain protocols or do you have 
to control both ends of the link?  If packets are dropped they
get retransmitted wasting more bandwidth, right?  What causes
tcp, icmp, or udp thrashing to occur?

In gnome ftp you can lower the transfer rate where I've noticed
that dropping it to the speed of my ADSL when I'm going online
reduces the number of collisions on the hub.  I'm going
to get a switch at some point :-)

The purposes for ISPs are: distributed management of ip addresses,
theoretically worm virus and spam control, and lastly sharing of
high cost TI/E1/OC3/fiber etc. lines between multiple subscribers.
IP addresses, even blocks, used to be free.  Nowadays a single IP 
is $5 or more a month.  ISP's are not required to advertise
compatibility information about their email offerings or even
provide spam control that their end users can take advantage of
which will actually reduce real spam.  That's not all, the cost 
of bandwidth is wildly variable even from a single provider 
over the areas that provider serves.  The bandwidth cap seems
to be wildly variable also, I believe 800k downstream 512k up
is the maximum a single ADSL line in Scappoose can do.  St.
Helens residents evidently can go faster on lines that are
of arguably lower data quality.  If you could get just DSL
on a second line it wouldn't be so bad, but DSL isn't sold
as a seperate service from POTS.  I know they could sell it
that way in Scappoose because they've turned POTS off before
without turning off DSL.  The only thing I'm wondering is
if there is a bottleneck from everyone coming in from as far
away as Astoria artificially lowering the speeds that can be 
offered in Scappoose.

      --  Michael