[ih] Internet without entrenched factions?

Dave Crocker dhc at dcrocker.net
Fri May 15 18:28:21 PDT 2026


On 5/15/2026 6:04 PM, Brian Carpenter via Internet-history wrote:
> SHIM6 did that, Happy Eyeballs does some of it. It is the real reason for
> having a session layer.


While any computer science problem can be aided by the addition of a 
layer of indirection, deciding where to place that layer is important.  
And often the best choice is not obvious.

Shim6 is down at the IP level below TCP.  My suggestion was above TCP 
and below apps, with a TCP emulation and mapping. (I think a fatal 
problem with my proposal was the operational requirement to configure 
firewalls to permit this additional 'transport' layer through.)

Going the other direction, around 1993/94 there was a proposal to 
multiplex telnet sessions to the same server, from the same terminal 
concentrator.  The original proposal would have allowed one telnet 
session to block another.  I proposed inserting the multiplexing farther 
/down/ so that each session had its own TCP connection.  RFC 1692

d/

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Dave Crocker

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