Re: Re-connecting

--- Roger Ivie <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Feb 2005, John Drake wrote:
> > Plus if you have
> > your own Linux box set up (as many people do)
> > you could set up your own Pop3 server running
> > on UDP and use that as a bridge to the "real
> > world".  At least that makes sense to me.
> 
> Look, it's not a matter of being "mean", "rude", or
> even of being too
> unimaginative to think outside the box. POP3 and
> other such protocols
> use TCP for good reason.

And yet MANY lists of "common ports" show POP3
running BOTH on TCP AND UDP.  Good grief, people
act like I'm making this up.  Anyway, I see no
reason for assinine comments like "are you smoking
something" or "you're being silly" or whatever.

> Ethernet, IP, and UDP do not guarantee delivery of
> packets. TCP builds
> on that foundation to provide guarantees. With a UDP
> connection, if a
> packet is dropped in the middle of an e-mail
> message, there's no way to
> know about it or recover from it. I suppose you're
> welcome to *try*
> running e-mail over UDP, but you'll either not want
> to OR you'll have to
> invent something similar to TCP to provide delivery
> guarantees. And
> then you won't be speaking POP3 anymore...
> -- 
> Roger Ivie
> [email protected]
> http://anachronda.webhop.org/

Yeah, I'm aware of the advantages of TCP over UDP.
I'm aware that TCP is connection oriented and UDP
is "connectionless".  And yeah, I wouldn't want
to not get my email.  Yet UDP is used for TFTP.
Wouldn't it be bad not to get the last few bytes
of a 10 MB file coming down over a 56K connection?
This is the bottom line.  For WHATEVER reason
some POP3 servers are listening on UDP.  
ColorForth has UDP but not TCP.  I don't think
it SO unreasonable to try to take advantage of
these to facts.  Others do.  Fine.  Who freakin
cares?

Regards,

John M. Drake


		
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