4 ms·

So if we could go back in time, could we create an interface that is less ridden with pitfalls?

• lkrubner 10y ago
  Do we need to go back in time? Can't we just start now, in 2017, to build something better than what they finalized on back in the spring of 1978? Don't we know more now than we did then? What are the forces that hold us back? If those forces are political, can we fight them?
  • Chai-T-Rex 10y ago
    There are already things like SCTP.
• toast0 10y ago
  The interface could be better, but depending on what you're doing, you likely want a protocol ack, not a network ack anyway. Ex: If you send a file, you probably want to know that the file write succeeded, not just that the program that's supposed to write the file received it. In today's world of janky TCP optimizing middleboxes, an ack just means you don't need to resend it, not that it arrived at the kernel of your peer; and it never meant the program at your peer read it.
• JdeBP 10y ago
  Or we could read http://cr.yp.to/tcpip/twofd.html http://cr.yp.to/tcpip/twofd.html .
  • dom0 10y ago
    The nice thing is that we have applications that give us this. E.g. this is literally how ssh(1) works when used as a transport layer. (You have stdin, stdout, and also stderr). The only issue is some in-band signaling on stderr and error codes when SSH itself has problems.