So what I am suggesting is that it seems that there is evidence that one
can do an "association" protocol that is relatively lightweight in terms
of machinery, packets, packet headers, and end-node state if one leaves
the heavy lifting of reliability to the underlying TCP protocol.
the on-the-wire protocol overhead is not that great. the computational
overhead to the host and application, and the resulting loss in maximum
bandwidth, are fairly expensive.
I tend to disagree. An association protocol only really does its work on
connect/reconnect - hopefully a rear event -- and when the application
says "let's establish a work-mark here".
And given that many of our applications are bursty/transactional vehicles
we're not talking about supercomputers transfering bulk files of
simulation data.
basically it's a lot more efficient to do some variant of mobile IP.
Mobility is not the issue. Rather, there is use, distinct from mobilty,
for an association that can persever longer than the underlying
transport(s), including changes of IP addresses. Had we had such a tool
it would have perhaps obviated some of things the mobility folks had to
do. But having an standardized association protocol is useful in its own
right, distinct from mobility.
In my eyes, an application that uses an association protocol to deal with
changes and faults in underlying connectivity is a lot more in accord with
end-to-end principles than if it relied on ad hoc transport/network
address juggling.
--karl-