v11i020: Idle demon

[Bob McGowen x4312 dept208]

In article <1990Aug23.143804.24954 at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> peltz at cerl.uiuc.edu (Steve Peltz) writes:
>In article <1990Aug23.051212.24281 at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian at zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>>                     ...  I'd be a little huffy about having my kermit
>>session killed in mid-download because I hadn't sent a keystroke in a
>
>But, but, kermit (and all other error-correcting download protocols) send in
		       ^^^

>keystrokes all the time!

If my understanding of "sliding window" protocols is correct, it IS possible
for a download to never (or seldom) have a response.  The basic idea is that
if an error has not occured, why spend the overhead to ack the packet.  So
a stream of packets flows until an error.  If no problems, then no input, so
line is idle and off we go in the middle of the transfer somewhere.

(The above is my deduction, not a quote so please be gentle in setting me
straight :-).  Thanks.)

Bob McGowan  (standard disclaimer, these are my own ...)
Product Support, Wyse Technology, San Jose, CA
..!uunet!wyse!bob
bob at wyse.com