Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!mimsy!oddjob!hao!ames!ucbcad!zen!ucbvax!SIMTEL20.ARPA!WANCHO From: WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA ("Frank J. Wancho") Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: TAC "noise" Message-ID: Date: Thu, 6-Aug-87 00:22:00 EDT Article-I.D.: SIMTEL20.WANCHO.12324223653.BABYL Posted: Thu Aug 6 00:22:00 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 8-Aug-87 08:35:30 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Distribution: world Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 31 Apparently some readers of my message about TAC "noise" inferred that we had reported this bug and received no action. We have not yet reported this problem, although we believe others elsewhere may have reported something similar with no resolution. My intent in sending that message was to try to gather some hypotheses to present when I do report the problem to give the problem more credibility and a higher likelihood of receiving attention and maybe even getting fixed. After all, the "true" nature of the problem is often easily misunderstood. It was also an attempt to discover if anyone else has experienced the same problem - TAC users are an individually isolated contigent of users with no one to represent them and no forum to bring up their problems, except, maybe NIC folks who mainly handle TAC Access card problems and refer technical problems to the NOC. Most TAC users aren't technical enough to push their statement of the problem past the "well, it must be line noise" answer, and the problem is not properly surfaced. However, the readership of this forum, not necessarily the forum itself, is, as hoped, quite technically knowledgeable. I immediately received several detailed responses basically supporting my suspicion that clock tolerances are the most likely culprit. In fact one respondent was actually able to prove the point by using an old 300 bps modem with a clock heavily suspected of having drifted over the years and observing the same "noise" characteristic as I described. So, with apologies to BBN for not having made my message clear, I will now go off and report the problem through conventional channels. Thank you all for bearing with me while I interrupted your discussions on the more esoteric aspects of TCP/IP. --Frank