[ih] history of protocol bugs

[Steve Crocker]

I agree with Craig and Dave that #1 was an implementation bug and #2 was a
specification bug.

#3 is a "bug" of a different order.  Craig says it's a growth issue.  Dave
says it's an enhancement.  It's clear the sequence space was too small to
support the kinds of delays that would be encountered in interplanetary
communication.  Thus, it would be fair to say this wasn't a bug, but simply
a limitation on the environments in which TCP would work.

Essentially all tools have limitations on how they're used.  That said,
I've always thought it was a weakness in the specification and
documentation of protocols that the quantitative aspects are usually not
addressed.  The tuning of timeouts, limitations on capacity, etc. are
usually left to the implementers and operators to figure out later.

Thus, if there's a bug in #3, I'd say it was in not making the limitations
explicit in the design and documentation.  Thus it was not a bug that the
TCP sequence space didn't support interplanetary communication.  If there
was a bug, it was, at worst, merely that anyone had in mind to use it for
that purpose.

Steve

On Fri, Nov 10, 2023 at 4:05 AM Dave Crocker via Internet-history <
internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:

> 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
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