Subject: Re: perhaps time to check our TCP against spec?
To: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
From: Kevin M. Lahey <kml@nas.nasa.gov>
List: tech-net
Date: 04/06/1998 16:53:29
In message <199804062255.PAA07347@Whisk.DSG.Stanford.EDU>Jonathan Stone writes
>
>>Sorry I missed seeing you there. I'm glad to see that NetBSD is up
>>on what's going on in the IETF.
>
>It's not that simple. 
> 
>NetBSD may be up with the letter of the relevant internet-drafts on
>stretch acks, but (as I've demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt) we
>have real problems with the spirit behind it.
>
>[snip...]
>
>In that respect we are *not* ``up on what's going on in the IETF''.

We're there, we're listening, and we're fixing the bugs that
get discusssed there.  Sadly, lots of assumptions underlying the
TCP implementation are either undocumented, or documented only
in papers scattered across dozens of different journals and proceedings.
Suggestions are welcome.

>I was *trying* to ask Jason what was going on with this, since I'd
>discussed this specific problem of bogus MTU calculations with him
>before.  If Jason forgot about that, then that's his bad.

>Fortunately, we do have some developers who will actually discuss
>areas where NetBSD has poor performance, rather than flaming and
>pretending the problems don't exist.  Kevin Lahey is fixing some of
>these bugs already.

I'm discussing this stuff with you in private e-mail, but I 
think it is pretty unfair to single me out -- the change logs
are a good indication of the effort folks are putting into this.
Both Jason and I are working hard to make our stack correct
and performant.

Kevin