Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
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Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#2> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often
> 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet
> 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet
I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such thing" any of the time. This might just be me misunderstanding whatever point they're trying to make, but I don't remember ever having such philosophical confusion from anything in any other "falsehoods programmers believe about..." article before.
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#3> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often > 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet > 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such t…
Yeah, I agree with you here.
I think the thing most related to that that I see people thinking is that send(2) & recv(2) calls translate 1:1 with packets send/recv. I.e., that they don't understand that the interface TCP exposes to applications is a byte stream. Which then results in things like thinking recv(2) will receive a complete "message" for some definition of message in the application protocol (i.e., the mistake belief that fragmentation won't happen).
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#4> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often > 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet > 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such t…
My only guess how this could make sense is if there is some ambiguity in the definition of a TCP packet.
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#5> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often > 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet > 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such t…
What it really means is: Packets have well-defined boundaries between sufficiently-adjacent nodes. They are not guaranteed to keep those boundaries end-to-end over arbitrary middleware.
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#61. A SYN will receive a SYN-ACK or a RST
2. A host from my machine is the same as from your machine
3. An IP from my machine is the same as from your machine
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#7> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often > 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet > 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such t…
It's about your abstraction level and the kinds of problem you are ignoring. It's true at the same time that you can't ignore the problems of stream communication nor the problems of package-based communication.
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#8> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often > 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet > 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such t…
If I had to guess, it would be an assumption that TCP was edge to edge with no translation in the middle.
My guess is that this is talking about systems in the middle of the network, changing (for example) their sizes by combining and splitting packets to fit through various transits.
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#9I recall it blew my fiancée’s mind that I could unplug her ethernet cable, move it around an obstacle, plug it back in and all her connections were still alive. It’s designed to have bombs dropped on it.
Re: Falsehoods programmers believe about TCP
#10> remember, all of the following statements are false at least some of the time, but for some of these, perhaps not very often > 5. There is a such thing as a TCP packet > 6. There is no such thing as a TCP packet I don't understand this at all. Either the concept of a TCP packet exists, or the concept does not exist. Even it's not being used in certain scenarios, I don't see how you can argue that "there's no such t…
5 and 6 are mutually exclusive. They don't make sense logically. And most of the list was never explained at all.