Tarek Koudsi wrote: > I would highly appreciat eit if someone could answer > this quesiton? is it possible in SSL for the receiver to > reorder SSL record blocks > that arrive out of order? if yes how? if not, why not?
Please somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but based on the OSI model, SSL (and it's newer replacement, TLS) runs at the Transport layer (hence, the TL in TLS), while TCP is a gateway between the Transport Layer and the Network Layer. Because TCP itself handles retransmissions and packets arriving in/out of order, I don't believe it's possible for SSL blocks to come in out of order when using TCP. With UDP, however, the reliability of a "connected" protocol is out the window -- and I suppose it'd be possible, in theory, if you were using UDP and SSL. But keep in mind -- this is not possible to do, according to the SSLv3 spec http://www.netscape.com/eng/ssl3/draft302.txt "At the lowest level, layered on top of some reliable transport protocol (e.g., TCP[TCP]), is the SSL Record Protocol...At the present time SSL is implemented using TCP/IP as the base networking technology." chris
