> But enabling tcp timestamps in general case brings little benefit and wastes 12 bytes of each packet for basically no gain.
I disagree; TCP timestamps are awesome. Linux enables these by defaults.
Quick search gives me some measurements from 2012 [1] that indicate that TCP timestamps are enabled on 83% of the top 100k web hosts.
You can afford to waste 12 bytes; the bottleneck isn't these 12 bytes but how well you get congestion control to work. And congestion control relies on getting an accurate estimate of the round-trip time
Edit: Also, just because 83% of web hosts having it enabled does not imply that it is a good idea to do so in general. They could just all be running the linux defaults and these could be just wrong
I disagree; TCP timestamps are awesome. Linux enables these by defaults.
Quick search gives me some measurements from 2012 [1] that indicate that TCP timestamps are enabled on 83% of the top 100k web hosts.
You can afford to waste 12 bytes; the bottleneck isn't these 12 bytes but how well you get congestion control to work. And congestion control relies on getting an accurate estimate of the round-trip time
[1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-36516-4_... (paywall)
Edit: typo
Edit: Also, just because 83% of web hosts having it enabled does not imply that it is a good idea to do so in general. They could just all be running the linux defaults and these could be just wrong