3 ms·

TCP won’t give you a reliable connection if you tunnel TCP over TCP, paradoxically, but you can tunnel TCP over UDP, UDP over TCP, or UDP over UDP. Leaky!

• lmm 5y ago
  Not "leaky", the conditions that a TCP connection needs its underlying transport to satisfy are explicitly documented, and TCP doesn't conform to them.
  • klodolph 5y ago
    If you're going into the details of what conditions a TCP connection needs, you're no longer talking about an abstraction.
    • lmm 5y ago
      An abstraction doesn't mean you can close your eyes and everything will work by magic. They're extremely useful tools, but like I said: garbage in, garbage out.
      • klodolph 5y ago
        > An abstraction doesn't mean you can close your eyes and everything will work by magic. Right... that's why they're called "leaky abstractions". Because when you don't pay attention to the implementation details and their constraints, things break. If it weren't leaky, you'd call it a "specification" instead of an "abstraction".
        • lmm 5y ago
          Requirements are not the same thing as implementation details. 2 + 2 = 4 is a sound abstraction, the fact that 1 + 2 doesn't = 4 doesn't make it "leaky".
          • klodolph 5y ago
            2 + 2 = 4 isn't an abstraction. I think we just have a different idea of what an "abstraction" is, which is fine.