[Spud] Connect and ACK Bits: Why?

[Jacob Chappell <[e-mail]>]

Good afternoon, everyone.

There's been something bothering me since I started working with SPUD. Now
that I realize there's a mailing list, I figure why not ask here?

My question is, why is connect/ack part of the SPUD protocol? The purpose
of these commands does not seem clear from the draft. For one, SPUD runs
over UDP, so there's no guarantee the connect or ack will even make it to
the other side. Second, a previous message on this mailing list from the
archives indicates that you don't even have to wait for an ack to send a
data packet. This makes sense, because the ack may be lost in transit (or
maybe the original connect was lost in transit). But if this is the case,
what's the point in even having connect/ack as part of the protocol?

It seems like a possible alternative would be to just send data packets
spontaneously. The client can just be sure to generate a new tube ID when
sending to a new destination/port pair, and maintain that state.
Ultimately, you're going to have to use timers to expire state in case of
packet loss, so why not just use timers exclusively?

Jacob Chappell