Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ukma!rutgers!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!XX.LCS.MIT.EDU!SRA
From: SRA@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU (Rob Austein)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Response to Long Distance NFS Query
Message-ID: <SRA.12360664021.BABYL@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU>
Date: 23 Dec 87 04:35:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 20


    Date: Tuesday, 22 December 1987  02:01-EST
    From: melohn@Sun.COM (Bill Melohn)

    ...          In any case, the trend is towards error-free or at least
    error correcting hardware/networks, so the NFS/UDP default seems even
    more reasonable in a high-fibre future.

Sorry, but this is a bad idea.  You really do need end-to-end software
checksuming.  MIT discovered this the hard way years ago when a
Chaosnet "bridge" (a level 3 router in spite of the name) developed a
stuck bit.  Chaosnet hardware does hardware checksumming, like
Ethernet (in fact, these days, most of it IS Ethernet, even at MIT
there are only two subnets left still using Chaosnet hardware).  The
Chaosnet hardware faithfully transported all the bits entrusted to it,
but the packets were corrupted nonetheless.

Things only get worse when you start talking about long haul nets.

--Rob