mo@prisma.UUCP (Mike O'Dell) (01/06/89)
I would argue in the strongest possible terms that is purely and simply broken. UNREACHABLE messages imply some kind of real failure or pathology (congestion), not that someone simply hasn't gotten an ARP back. I understand that they may not want to hang on to a packet because of buffering, so they can simply drop it silently. Telling someone the host is unreachable is simply not true in your example. -Mike O'Dell
VAF@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU (Vince Fuller) (01/07/89)
I'm surprised that no one has made the obvious observation: this behavior is completely broken for the simple reason that it is a gross violation of the layering of the TCP/IP suite. ARP and IP are fundamentally independant - IP can exist without ARP as can ARP without IP. This behavior adds cross-protocol dependancies which do not belong there. Vince Fuller, Stanford Networking -------