I heard about the EU telling Netflix to stop HD streaming to stop the net from   
   collapsing, that got me thinking about congestion. For example, say there's a   
   server in Europe streaming stuff to India. There are (say) 2 links into India   
   from EU, one via    
   Iran, one via Tajikistan. Now the first router on the hop outwards from the EU   
   server will CHECK which way the route is less congested, right, before it   
   picks one of these 2 paths, without which the net would have been unworkable   
   by now? Now my question    
   is, how does IT, sitting in the *EU*, know whether the link between   
   *TAJIKISTAN* and Mumbai is free, as opposed to the link between *Iran* and   
   Mumbai? Is this info constantly shared between routers like, per MILLISECOND   
   or something??   
   Also, I heard that CISCO somehow (!!) knows how WORLD internet traffic is   
   moving - is this somehow because CISCO routers "send something back" to them   
   or "call home"? Otherwise how could they know this?? HIGHLY disturbing!   
      
   I'm also curious about what exactly happens if a *faster moving packet*, say   
   segment 2 of a stream arrives at the client in Mumbai before a slower, segment   
   1 (say via the Tajikistan link, while segment 2 came via Quicker Iran)? Will   
   the Linux kernel just    
   HOLD  segment 2 forever inside RAM or something while waiting for the rest to   
   turn up? (that's not a good thing, is it?) What about Windows?   
      
      
      
   Thanks.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)