The controller's two throughput-driven gates both compare "what the pipeline
carried" against the ENCODER's target: the utilization gate asks whether a clean
window actually tested that target (a calm menu proves nothing), and the
never-decaying proven mark bounds how far every later climb may step.
Both were fed `bytes_received`, which counts every accepted datagram — headers,
FEC parity, probe filler, audio. So the figure rose with the redundancy the host
adds in ANSWER to loss: at 25 % FEC the gate passed with the encoder emitting
~55 % of target, and the proven mark inherited the same inflation permanently.
The signal was weakest exactly on the lossy links it exists for.
Count data-shard payload separately at the reassembler's routing decision — the
same place, and for the same reason, the probe counters are already stamped —
and feed the ABR that. First time both gates are dimensionally honest: a media
rate compared against a media target.
enricobuehler
e9a7373c76