[e2e] UDP length field

[Vernon Schryver]

> > Raw network stuff is not the only area area in which that author
> > displays complete ignorance along with complete certitude.
>
> Complete certitude can be expected (and even forgiven) when you've written
> what PC Gamer calls "the best game ever".

Who should forgive complete ignorance with complete certitued?  Perhaps
marketeers and trade rag editors, authors, and readers, but who else?
Did the market agree with that trade rag about that game?  Did it sell
more copies than, for example, Doom?
Did the virtues of that game involve its network play or was it popular
because of its single-player action?
Would success in writing a network game invalidate what everyone else
knows about networking?  Is it impossible to get lots of the technical
stuff wrong, but still make a popular game?


> Perhaps if these forums were more accomodating, the issues affecting
> network development in the consumer Internet would be better appreciated
> by both sides. Calling them idiots only keeps the next-gen development
> beyond the IETF's reach.

"These forums"?  Are the IETF and IRTF mailing lists supposed to
provide elementary tutorials for people who can't be bothered to
read the technical literature?

The trade rags always tell us it's someone else's fault that they say what
they say.  They go on about wonderful ideas such as the discovery that
sequence numbers for bytes instead of packets is a major bug in TCP or
the evils of CSMA/CD collisions.  Then they rant about the vices of "legacy
programmers" when those they label insiders are not interested in their
revealed wisdom.

If "the next-gen development" is like WAP or this fellow's appreciation
of time or other distributed application tactics, then keeping it "beyond
the IETF's reach" is good for the IETF.  Ignoring such Technology is the
only hope of of genuine improvements.  Never mind that whenever you see
"next generation" applied to something, it is almost certainly toxic snake
oil that marketeers failed to sell as some other kind of Technology.


Vernon Schryver    vjs at rhyolite.com