Re: Window Scale option

Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov> Wed, 06 May 1998 07:33 UTC

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To: braden@isi.edu
Cc: tcplw@bsdi.com, mathis@psc.edu
Subject: Re: Window Scale option
Reply-To: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
From: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 00:21:36 -0700
Sender: thorpej@nas.nasa.gov

On Tue, 5 May 1998 12:12:53 -0700 
 braden@isi.edu wrote:

 > I would not call it a "mindset", I would call it concern about
 > (possible lack of) interoperability.  However, the issue of breaking
 > some TCPs with options on non-SYN segments may well be less of a
 > concern than it was 8 years ago.

Unfortunately, there's still the concern of intermediate agents (e.g.
routers, terminal servers, etc.) completely losing if they encounter
non-SYN packets with options.

It's not too hard to find recent accounts of people having to disable
timestamps because their or their ISP's terminal server or ISDN gateway
can't cope with them.  (Presumably, they're looking that far into the
packet because they're trying to do header compression.)

Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                            Home: +1 408 866 1912
NAS: M/S 258-5                                       Work: +1 650 604 0935
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