[e2e] purpose of pseudo header in TCP checksum

David P. Reed dpreed at reed.com
Tue Feb 15 08:11:38 PST 2005


Noel - you are correct, and I agree that it is better.  If we were to 
view the IP namespace as merely a routing "hint" and put the actual end 
point address in the  TCP layer, end-to-end that would indeed solve the 
problem.

I also agree that IPv6 continues to perpetuate this confusion of "shared 
fields" between the end-to-end protocol and the IP layer.

Your approach is cleaner, and I wish we had had the guts to push that 
through in the 1976 process - despite the bias toward character echoing 
that pervaded a large, pragmatically motivated part of the design 
community at the time.  (and who knows, had we done it "right" we might 
have never had enough adoption for the correct design to survive).

I stand by my hyperbolic statement about "terrorists"   -  you may 
recall that the original sales of NAT boxes claimed that NAT was an 
Internet "Standard" when it was merely part of a set of alternatives 
being considered for a next generation solution to the address space 
shortage.   Those who deceived the world by marketing this non-standard 
as if it were an accepted IETF standard were indeed creating havoc that 
has compromised the network irrevocably.  IMHO, of course.  :-)   I 
wrote about it at the time... as did Larry Lessig.


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