[ih] Design choices in SMTP

[Michael Kjörling]

On 7 Feb 2023 13:37 -0500, from internet-history at elists.isoc.org (Guy Almes via Internet-history):
> <> and the speed of light got worse.  I mostly mean this in the sense that
> it didn't get any better, while processing and transmission both got much
> faster.

I have for a long time found Cliff Stoll's postulation about the
distance to the hacker in _The Cuckoo's Egg_ to be an interesting
illustration of this. I don't recall the exact details of the account
in his book off the top of my head, but basically, he measured
transmission response delays between his computers in western USA and
the hacker's unknown location and, applying a simple speed-of-light
calculation, determined that the hacker must have been on the Moon;
whereas a few real-life tests indicated a distance pointing to
somewhere in Europe. (It turned out in the end to be West Germany.)
The only culprit that could plausible explain the discrepancy was
retransmission delays.

-- 
Michael Kjörling                     🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”