* David Malone ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [000316 16:51]:
> I've tried this over my slip link and it does seem to reduce the
> number of packets sent by 2 for telnetting to the daytime port. I
> also had a look at fetch (the only thing in the tree which uses
> MSG_EOF at the moment), which has an option for turning off the
> MSG_EOF stuff 'cos some buggy http servers don't like half closed
> connections. I don't think this applies in this case 'cos we're
> on the server side - not the client side, and the client expects
> an EOF anyway.
>
> Would this be an acceptable patch to inetd? It would be nice to
> encourage the use of T/TCP within FreeBSD, as we seem to be the
> only people who have it ;-)
A couple of points of feedback:
- by default, T/TCP is off in the kernel (see src/sys/netinet/tcp_subr.c;
around line 85 in my 3.x box). It's also off by default in
/etc/defaults/rc.conf
- all the "internal" services that inetd provides (including daytime) are
turned off by default in /etc/inetd.conf
- security conscious people who have read through LINT may turn on the
"TCP_DROP_SYNFIN" kernel opt, which breaks T/TCP. I think that this option
should be made a sysctl knob just like support for T/TCP before a change
like this goes through. That way, any program that wants to support T/TCP
can query the value of the knob before deciding if it will support the
extensions or not.
I like T/TCP (I use it on some of my networked apps for the same reasons you
describe), but I don't think that it should be added to a program like inetd
which has two default settings that would need to be changed before the
T/TCP extensions would ever provide any benefit.
More education on T/TCP for both client and server authors is the key here I
think; if major web browsers alone would support the extensions, then the
massive overhead of HTTP (and the issues that arise from getting around it
with HTTP/1.1 KeepAlive and such) would be significantly reduced.
--
j.
James FitzGibbon [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Targetnet.com Inc. Voice/Fax +1 416 306-0466/0452
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