lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (04/04/84)
First off, I think that UUCP is going to be around for a long time.
Secondly, I think that Tim is confusing the various layers of a
communications protocol. The packet protocol itself is only responsible
for providing an error-corrected channel between two hosts. Tim
seems to acknowledge that the UUCP "g" packet protocol seems to do this
nicely in the real-world environment. He then complains about
reliability problems getting messages through. Those problems are NOT
related to the packet protocol -- they are related to higher level
functionality -- mostly in the way uuxqt and various mail systems interact.
The uuxqt program was designed to be general purpose -- and mail is but a
subset of its operational abilities. The UUCP project group is currently
looking at enhancements to the uuxqt/mail system which would allow for more
reliability for message transfers -- but note that this is a tricky
issue in a multi-hop network such as that we're dealing with.
The point is simply that the network problems we see are NOT related
to the UUCP packet protocol ("g"), but are related to other aspects
of the overall network environment and program interactions.
--Lauren--