The lost Van Jacobson paper that could save the Internet 
> <i>packets are queued for a long time during congestion instead of being dropped quickly. This misleads TCP congestion control and leads to even more congestion.</i><p>The last statement is true only for TCP/Reno. Reno here refers to a congestion detection algorithm, and it is that of looking for <i>packet loss</i> to recognize the congestion. This is the simplest and oldest approach, and it has been suceeded by TCP/Vegas, which looks at delivery delays instead, or how it is called a congestion <i>avoidance</i> algorithm. Basically the idea is that if the route gets congested, there will be buffeting happening at some hop and that would cause the RTT along the route to climb up.<p>This being said, I don't know the split between Reno and Vegas adoption in the real world. However I think newer Windows versions are on Vegas.