> If you linger on the close (such that all data is acknowledged
> before your socket closes -- and assuming no ack spoofing) then
> you'll have a firm guarantee that your data reached the remote
> system.
Modulo LINGER working correctly (which my experience suggests is an
iffy proposition).
> This guarantee, however, is only for the end system -- it does not
> say the end application received the data (it may never read it).
I believe the strict application of the end-to-end principle is the
only true answer. That is, the applications have to ACK the arrival
of the data to its peer application. Trusting anything (transport
protocols, routers, spoofing boxes, proxies, NATs, etc.) in between
the application processes for "guarantees" is always going to be
dicey (where the defintion of "dicey" sort of depends on what is
involved in between the apps).
allman
--- Mark Allman -- NASA GRC/BBN -- http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~mallman/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 09 2001 - 13:38:37 EST