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From: jdarcy@pinocchio.encore.com (Jeff d'Arcy)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: partial transfer recovery in RFC and OSI protocols
Message-ID: <10728@encore.Encore.COM>
Date: 23 Dec 89 17:07:03 GMT
References: <8912201718.AA10297@braden.isi.edu>
Sender: news@Encore.COM
Lines: 16

braden@VENERA.ISI.EDU:
> Well, not exactly.  How do you compute N, or reset your file to N?  N
> is a count of bytes in the transmitted data stream, which is related to
> file position parameters through a transformation which could be very
> complex.  On the machine with a complex file structure, the only way to
> compute N in general is to play through the conversion process.

This kind of restart is obviously a non-trivial problem.  That being the
case, I think it makes a lot of sense to keep the protocol simple and
make the machine- or format-induced complexity invisible to the common
network software.  By making the protocol more complex you introduce
additional overhead even for simple cases or between systems that have
very simple file structures.

Jeff d'Arcy     OS/Network Software Engineer     jdarcy@encore.com
  If Encore endorsed my opinions, they couldn't afford to pay me