Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!wivax!cadmus!harvard!seismo!umcp-cs!chris
From: chris@umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards,net.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: 4.2BSD IP/TCP bugs
Message-ID: <7@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Sep-84 00:45:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.7
Posted: Mon Sep 17 00:45:25 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Sep-84 04:43:03 EDT
References: <420@wdl1.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 18

...
	TCP will send many small packets for interactive traffic, even
	over slow links; there is no fix for the small packet problem.
	(Again, a design problem which will choke long-haul nets.)

The problem is that the tcp connection is hooked in at the Unix system
call interface level, and the I/O calls are being made one byte at a
time.  ``tar'' is a good (bad?) example; try a ``tar tv'' over the net.
Yucko.

The problem can be ``solved'' by fixing the offending programs to
properly buffer their output (one of the first things I did to uucp was
to set line-buffering on stderr).  Changing stdio would be a good idea
but would involve quite a bit of work....
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci (301) 454-7690
UUCP:	{seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris@umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris@maryland