Reassembly is architecturally a gateway function
although it is a perfectly fine thing, to be able to do reassembly in a
gateway, there is nothing that requires it to be done there.
as noted already, it is also fine to do it at the recipient site.
in fact, there are a number of scenarios that require it, both for internet
mail and for IP. The simple description of the basis for this is having no
part of the final path be shared through a common infrastructure device.
hence the first point of commonality on the receive side is the receiving
host.
d/
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Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
+1.408.246.8253
dcrocker a t ...
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