4.2BSD IP/TCP bugs

[Chris Torek]

...
	TCP will send many small packets for interactive traffic, even
	over slow links; there is no fix for the small packet problem.
	(Again, a design problem which will choke long-haul nets.)

The problem is that the tcp connection is hooked in at the Unix system
call interface level, and the I/O calls are being made one byte at a
time.  ``tar'' is a good (bad?) example; try a ``tar tv'' over the net.
Yucko.

The problem can be ``solved'' by fixing the offending programs to
properly buffer their output (one of the first things I did to uucp was
to set line-buffering on stderr).  Changing stdio would be a good idea
but would involve quite a bit of work....
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci (301) 454-7690
UUCP:	{seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!chris
CSNet:	chris at umcp-cs		ARPA:	chris at maryland