It's time to replace TCP in the datacenter (2023)

> If Homa becomes widely deployed, I hypothesize that core congestion will cease to exist as a significant networking problem, as long as the core is not systemically overloaded.

Yep. Sure; but, what happens when it becomes overloaded?

> Homa manages congestion from the receiver, not the sender. [...] but the remaining scheduled packets may only be sent in response to grants from the receiver

I hypothesize it will not be a great day when you do become "systemically" overloaded.

Will it be a worse day than it would be with TCP? Either way, the only solution is to add more hardware, unless I'm misunderstanding the term "systemically overloaded".

I think so. If your core saturates, you add more capacity to your core switch. In HOMA, you need to add more receivers, but if you can't add them because the core can't handle more ports?

Ehrm. Looks like core saturation all over again.

Edit: Just popped to my mind. What prevents maliciously reducing "receive quotas" on compromised receivers to saturate an otherwise capable core? Looks like it's a very low bar for a very high impact DOS attack. Ouch.

This is designed for in data center use, so the security tradeoff is probably worth it