On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 03:05:05PM -0500, Brian Utterback wrote:
> It seems backwards to me because:
> 
> 1. The purpose of fused connections was to reduce the TCP baggage,
> not introduce more.

This seems wrong to me.  Fused connections are needed to realize the
better performance that one would expect from being all-local.  No ACKs
are needed, for example, because there are no packet drops.  And both
nodes know exactly how much buffer space their peer has.

There is still a need for flow control though.  IMO that flow control
needs to be about free buffer space in the receiver, but if we have
STREAMS in the way and it can consume additional resources (from a
finite pool) then the flow control needs to flow down the STREAMS as
well.

I find this 8 message thing as lame as you do.  But I don't understand
STREAMS well enough, much less TCP fusion to offer alternatives.

> 2. As far as I know, no other IPC method imposes this kind of flow
> control. Why single out TCP?

Pipes certainly impose flow control!

Most other IPC are not stream-oriented, but there's still some flow
control (e.g., door_call() can block if the server's threads are all
busy and no new ones can be created).  Either you have flow-control on
unreliable IPC: resources are finite.

Nico
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