From: Elwyn Davies [elwynd(_at_)dial(_dot_)pipex(_dot_)com]
On 02/04/12 18:53, Scott Brim wrote:
On 04/02/12 03:12, Riccardo Bernardini allegedly wrote:
In the Introduction I read
"Mind you, the Null Packet is not created by compressing a packet until
it
disappears into nothingness."
That is nice, since I believe that doing so would create a "black hole
packet" that would attract and collapse the whole Internet. On the
plus side, we would not need to worry anymore about IPv6...
There's your RFC for next April.
Of course some theorists believe that all communication links carry a
continual traffic of Null Packets resulting from the scalar TOS Field
that pervades the Internet and occasionally quantum fluctuations result
in pairs of virtual packets (such as ICMP Echo and Echo Responses) being
created and traveling off in opposite directions. Normally most of
these virtual packets recombine without being observed, but occasionally
they result in unexpected congestion when an encounter with a router
collapses the superposition of protocol states in which these virtual
packets normally exist.
And by Hawking's Theorem, due to quantum fluctuations each black hole
packet will emit a radiation of packets (with a black-body spectrum!),
whose intensity will be *inversely proportional* to the length of the
black hole packet. A black hole packet of any significant length
won't substantially affect a network because its radiation will be
very sparse, but as the packet shrinks to zero length, it will end its
life with a burst of intense packet radiation, causing network
congestion and, possibly, collapse, unless the router buffers are
large enough to store the burst.
I foresee the need of a large government grant to research this
problem. (See RFC 439 for another vital, government-supported
research project.)
Dale