Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
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From: mcdonald@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Doug McDonald)
Subject: Re: telnet and Nagle's algorithm
Message-ID: <1991May18.200009.24658@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News)
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
References: <9105172007.AA28847@ftp.com> 
Date: Sat, 18 May 1991 20:00:09 GMT
Lines: 26


In article <9105172007.AA28847@ftp.com> ljm@FTP.COM (leo j mclaughlin iii) writes:
>Yet more bad news.  The primary reason for allowing Nagle's algorithm to be
>turned off was X-Windows.  Nagle's algorithm is very bad for any application
>(such as X-windows) with short bursts of high priority traffic.  For these
>sorts of applications, most (all?) vendors who do Nagle allow 'no Nagle' as
>an option when opening a connection.
>
>Thus, it is the *application* which can turn off Nagle, not the user.  Even
>worse from your point of view, the one application you would have a very
>tough time convincing people should be un-Nagled, the one application which
>generates the overwhelming majority of 'wasteful' small packets in the
>Internet, the one application for which Nagle was designed, is telnet.
>

I simply don't underestand this. If there is ONE application for which
instantaneous sending of individual bytes is important, it is telnet.
Otherwise user interaction could simply go to hell. Consider what
would happen if, for instance, you tried to do something like an
arcade game over Telnet. Or cursor control in an editor.

Besides, if you want a Telnet with Nagle, can't you simply have the
Telnet program ask for no Nagle???


Doug McDonald
