On Protocols

[eminence_gris]

If you use UDP, but layer a scheme on top of it to ensure reliable delivery, by the time you're done, you will have something which will basically be a user-space implementation of TCP.

If what you wind up with doesn't look basically like TCP, it's because you did something wrong

Comments

[icis_machine]

uh yeah.

that's why if you do this, you want it for control/configure information remotely so it is done sparingly.

other else you basically have a ping flood from help.

it's like everyone shouting in a room directions that everyone must follow and pass onto others.

[eminence_gris]

This rant was written with a particular middleware implementation in mind. I've worked at three different places that used this middleware, and it was responsible for severe network meltdowns at all three of them.

The entertaining thing about the third place was that I mentioned this in the interview, and explained exactly why it was a problem and why it was not possible to solve the problem within the limits of the design. They said "Well, we've never had a problem. That's because we're smarter than those other guys."

Three weeks after I started working there, the middleware melted down their network.

[icis_machine]

clearly it is your fault them. bringing bad voodoo to the company.

check out htis article, it might change their minds:

http://www.embedded.com/products/softwaretools/206905497?_requestid=753038

[eminence_gris]

Actually, it's more like that I'm the evil mastermind like Sean Connery in that crappy Avengers movie.

"From now on, you will buy your network weather from me!"

[ariyanakylstram]

*rofl*

oh. yes.

[eminence_gris]

The typical motivator is multicast. Everybody gets this idea that they could implement a local multicast tick data distribution system. It's a pernicious idea that speaks to something deep within the software architect's hindbrain.

And it always works great in testing, and even scales up promisingly, until you reach a certain point of network congestion at which it goes directly from "works fine" to "smoking ruin" without passing through "hey guys, it looks like the network's starting to get hot".

[eminence_gris]

Oh, by the way, I sent one of my coworkers the link to that post you did about Tabata intervals, because he had been talking about doing interval training this afternoon when he went to the gym.

Poor guy, he thought it was a really neat idea. He just called me to let me know he made it halfway through the 4 minutes before he faded. I can't remember his exact words, but it was something along the lines of "It was worse than I believed it was possible for it to be". Still, he's far braver than I am to have even seriously attempted it.