Re: T2 - Assertions and Questions

[Dan Weinreb <dlw@exceloncorp.com>]

   Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 14:40:53 -0600
   From: Colleen Evans <cevans@sonicsoftware.com>

								   If the
   intermediary hops aren't reliable, the bridge doesn't connect the end points.
   You're only as strong as your weakest link.

I don't think that the principal of "You're only as strong as your
weakest link" applies here.

Consider the analogy with TCP/IP.  The IP itself is not reliable.  It
is purely "best-effort".  Any router is free to drop an IP packet if
it wants to.  And yet, TCP, built upon IP, is reliable.  The
technology of using retranmissions, acknowledgements, and duplicate
elimination allows reliable once-and-only-once semantics over an
unreliable substrate.

-- Dan