Quoting [EMAIL PROTECTED], from the post of Sat, 30 Nov: > On 29-Nov-2002 David Bergman wrote: > > Here's a problem that *sounded* impossible ... I almost regret posting > > the story to a wide audience, because it makes a great tale over drinks > > <snip snip snip - most of the story>
indeed, you could have sent a link instead of the full text. there are several points in this story that make it unbelievable in my book. first, that 3ms delay is a lot in early 1990s standards, second that sendmail as a user process, manages it's own TCP connection timeout when that's a kernel thing. I'm no great programmer, but I think creating a TCP connection is a blocked call and the timeout is fixed in the kernel. furthermosre, it assumes all internet links go in straight lines and are equaly wide and equaly congested and that the backbone is indeed that clean. a physicist, ignoring the processing time of cisco microcontrollers and the delay of repeating packets from one side of a switch to the other, and then from ether to WAN and through a modem, would STILL argue that electricity doesn't travel at the speed of light either. and there are a few other problems. in short, only a cute suburban legend :) -- Your milage may vary Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
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