Re: holding connections open: a modest proposal

Darren New (dnew@sgf.fv.com)
Thu, 15 Sep 1994 10:36:49 -0400 (EDT)

> The server sends a binary stream in packets,
> each packet prefixed with a 2-byte packet
> length in network byte order. Packets can be
> any convenient size from 1-65K bytes. The data
> stream is terminated by a zero-length packet.

ARG! What's with the 2-byte lengths!?

Why in the world would you limit packets to 64K? To save an extra 2 bytes
per packet? This means I *have* to chop up files even if I know in
advance they'll fit. Let's not revert to PDP-11 mindset, shall we?

> You can do this with the BSD sockets API with
> the shutdown(2) call. Don't know about other
> implementations though.

(Not that they'd put "close" in the header of the man page so you could
find it with man -k, tho.)

-- Darren