Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!UC.MSC.UMN.EDU!slevy
From: slevy@UC.MSC.UMN.EDU ("Stuart Levy")
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: Acking out-of-order packets?
Message-ID: <8803041559.AA23060@uc.msc.umn.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 88 15:59:41 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 7

Be aware that packets may have other reasons for arriving out of order than
that they've followed multiple paths.  One possible strategy for giving
interactive traffic priority over bulk data on a crowded link is to 
preferentially forward small packets.  I don't know of any specification
that says this shouldn't be done.  We've used an Ethernet bridge that actually
does this, and caused a 4.2 TCP bug to be exercised (when a FIN arrived earlier
than some trailing data, the FIN was ignored.  The peer TCP had a bug that
caused it to never retransmit a FIN, and so...).