[MUD-Dev] Net protocols for MUDing (was: Moore's Law sucks)

[Vadim Tkachenko]

coder at ibm.net wrote:
> 
> On 20/02/98 at 02:35 AM, Jon Leonard <jleonard at divcom.umop-ap.com> said:
> >On Sun, Feb 15, 1998 at 11:55:11PM +0000, coder at ibm.net wrote: > On
> >14/02/98 at 01:58 AM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user2.inficad.com> said: >
> 
> >> It makes a lot more sense to me to move away from TCP for MUD clients, and
> >> instead look to UDP and design the client and server to be tolerant of
> >> dropped packets.  Sure, things will get a bit jerky of occassion, but it
> >> sure beats waiting for the time-out and re-send of a dropped packet.
> 
> >I'd be extremely reluctant to do this.  It's very easy to redesign TCP
> >badly, and nearly impossible to do better.
> 
> No, you misunderstand.
> 
> I am proposing that MUD clients move to a protocol and data model which is
> tolerant of data loss.  If packets get lost, or arrive far to late, the
> client won't care and will continue to offer a decent representation of
> what is happening in the game.  The main problem with telnet lag is *not*
> latency but dropped packets -- the whole damn client freezes while
> awaiting the lost packet.  Instead have the client be predictive and work
> on a best-effort basis.  It works with the data it gets, and ignores or
> attempts to generate the data it never sees for whatever reason.

Coming from the other side - the top: server to client communication
shouldn't rely on transaction-based protocol, but on notification-based.
Then, slowly, we will come down...

There is a Russian joke, that expression about slowly coming down is
from it, I will publish it on explicit permission.

> J C Lawrence

--
Still alive and smile stays on,
Vadim Tkachenko <VadimT at 4CS.Com>
--
UNIX _is_ user friendly, he's just very picky about who his friends are