[ih] history of protocol bugs

[Dave Crocker]

On 11/10/2023 4:50 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
> Which of these bugs (or kinds of bugs) do you want to track?

RFC Errata are required to be deviations in the specification, from what 
was intended by the authors.

This draws a distinction from things that might be called 
'enhancements'.  A bug is a behavior that was not originally intended.  
An enhancement is a change in intention.

So...

> 1. 20 years ago, a software vendor shipped code that computed the wrong
> checksum on a FIN-ACK if the FIN-ACK had to be retransmitted.
bug


> 2. In 1974, Ray Tomlinson
...
>    He realized that
> TCP needed a way to select initial sequence numbers that prevented old
> segments from being confused with new segments.
bug.


> 3. Around 1990, people realized that the TCP sequence number space was too
> small for gigabit links and a TCP option was developed to expand the
> sequence space.
enhancement.


d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
mast:@dcrocker at mastodon.social