[ih] lack of service guarantees in the internet meaning that it cannot ever "fail"

[dhc2 at dcrocker.net (Dave CROCKER)]

Matthias B?rwolff wrote:
>      (Accordingly, TCP can
> be made to never time out even if civilization around it has dawned for
> good.) 


A classic story from the early days of TCP was about Bob Braden, of USC-ISI, 
working at UCL in London for awhile, connecting back to ISI over a satellite 
link.  The satellite link went away and Bob got tired of waiting, so he went off 
to dinner.  He came back some hours later and the link had been restored, and 
TCP casually continued with the existing session.

Timeouts for TCP are implementation artifacts, not protocol features.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net