TCP and The Lower Bound of Web Performance

The big picture is that it’s a talk about how the Internet works, in a couple of different ways. First, I spend a lot of time explaining one of the fundamental protocols of the Internet, how it works, and how it helps the Internet avoid congestion collapse. But also, I spend a lot of time talking about the nature of digital networks, the origins and technical philosophy of the Internet and the Internet’s governance mechanisms. This is new version of a talk I originally gave at Velocity in 2009. Since then I’ve expanded it substantially and updated it to reflect that the latest changes to TCP slow start.