[e2e] end2end-interest Digest, Vol 25, Issue 26

[Michael Welzl]

> > To me, there's just one open question. When all nodes authenticate
> > themselves in a Grid, why don't they just set up and maintain TCP
> > connections to each other forever?
> 
> Because processes come and go, I'd think.  Plus, perhaps, a dose
> of "basic TCP can work to anywhere; it saves on management costs
> to use it everywhere".
> 
> On the other side of the coin, in such a trusted environment, I
> don't see why you shouldn't send
> 
>   1) -> SYN, query data, FIN
>   2) <- SYN, response data, FIN, ACK(SYN+query+FIN)
>   3) -> ACK(SYN+response+FIN)
> 
> without going the whole hog on T/TCP.

Hm, isn't doing this type of communication what T/TCP is
all about?

With normal TCP, the host which is contacted in 1) would
be allowed to receive the "query data" and buffer it
somewhere, but not deliver it to the application before
the handshake is over according to RFC 793. While this
offers some protection against DoS attacks, I think we
could drop this requirement in a trusted environment.

The question is really whether this is a big issue for
anything except my Grid scenario  :-)   , and if this
particular scenario couldn't also be handled by
maintaining connections instead of changing TCP...

Cheers,
Michael