Osterhout's response to Pepelnjak's criticism is solid, but he mentions not being familiar with SCTP. Homa is much more fairly compared to SCTP than TCP, since there is a large intersection with the problems they solve. Osterhout seems to think that ACK-based sender congestion avoidance is a significant problem in the datacenter.
SCTP uses ACK-based sender congestion avoidance, but lacks the head-of-line blocking that TCP has[1]. Comparing Homa to SCTP would be a good way to test this thesis.
SCTP uses ACK-based sender congestion avoidance, but lacks the head-of-line blocking that TCP has[1]. Comparing Homa to SCTP would be a good way to test this thesis.
1: Or rather it's optional.