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From: geof@imagen.UUCP.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Re: Tcp/Ip vs a store & forward network
Message-ID: <8703301830.AA00030@apolling.imagen.uucp>
Date: Mon, 30-Mar-87 13:30:38 EST
Article-I.D.: apolling.8703301830.AA00030
Posted: Mon Mar 30 13:30:38 1987
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 >      Which brings me to something I would like to get created:  FTP to spool so that
 >      no pswds need to make their way around the network.  

[sorry for not answering directly, I don't have a reliable path from USENET
 to bitnet -- my packets always go into a black hole :-]

I think that you are arguing for new conventions, not new protocols.  Queuing
of FTP requests is something you can program on your local machine.  
As pointed out, in the internet, a host has no concept of "closer", so it
is impossible for a store and forward FTP to do anything other than what
SMTP does now.  Unless you do manual routing.  Augh.

Similarly, who says that Arpanet mail has end-to-end ACKs?  It just depends
on where you put the "end."  I put it at the user, and I want to see explicit
acks from users, too (well, I flame so much that it actually doesn't matter
to me if some of my typed jewels drop on the floor -- but when I care, I ask
for an explicit response).  For example, I recently looked over the shoulder
of another user, and discovered that he didn't realize that MM would only
show him the messages as "NEW" once -- after that they were only marked UNSEEN.
About three weeks before he had been cut off by a bad phone connection, and
thus missed reading 2 important messages for three weeks - until I showed
him that MM still had those messages marked UNSEEN (he didn't know what the
U was for).  So what good was Arpanet's ~100% reliable delivery there!

On USENET it is normal to keep a copy of a sent message until you receive
an ACK for it, manually sent by the recipient.  It is reasonable etiquette
to ACK a message when you receive it (unless you want to be able to claim that
you didn't receive it :-)) with a small message that says "I got your message"
or even just "ack".  My opinion is that mail reading software should
encourage this behavior by suggesting such a reply and having an automatic
way of generating it.

- Geof