ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Application knowledge of transport characteristics (was: Re: Domain Centric Administration)

2007-07-09 00:48:23

On Jul 8, 2007, at 10:53 PM, Lars Eggert wrote:

On 2007-7-5, at 19:07, ext Tom.Petch wrote:
If we had a range of transports (perhaps like OSI offered), we could choose the one most suited. We don't, we only have two, so it may become a choice of one with a hack. But then that limited choice may be the reason why the Internet Protocol Suite has become the suite of choice for most:-)

We have four standards-track transport protocols (UDP, TCP, DCCP and SCTP), and, FWIW, SCTP has a concept of record boundaries.

Designers of applications and higher-layer protocols still have a tendency to ignore SCTP and DCCP and the particular features they can offer to applications. This can make applications more complex, because they need to re-invent mechanisms that a more appropriate transport protocol would have provided.

A desire to use TCP or UDP could also be due vested interests in existing solutions. Utilization of transports with poor error detection capabilities as found with TCP or UDP checksums, and even Fletcher-32, have modulos that can mask fairly common memory or interface errors. SCTP extends error detection and ensures jumbo frames are afforded end-to-end error detection equivalent to 1.5 KB ethernet LAN packets. A number of errors go undetected by TCP or UDP. Handling such errors by upper protocols layers is usually not robust, if even existent. When reliability, high availability, low latency, and elimination of head of queue blocking matters, SCTP offers a clean solution.

-Doug

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>