Re: FW: RFC1982 on Serial Number Arithmetic

Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Tue, 3 Sep 1996 19:45:01 -0400


It's this kind of short-sighted thinking that's preventing the IP
and DNS protocols from using subspace warp bands for interplanetary
networking... what a crock! I mean, I can't even send IP packets to
Gallileo because the light delay to Jupiter is > MSS (255 seconds,
the maximum packet lifeltime). Now this?I, mean, I can't update DNS
root zone transfers more than a few thousand times a second?
Pshaw....

What kind of confusion is this? You can't send IP packets to Galileo
*in normalspace* because of the light delay --- but you just said
you're routing in subspace, so n-space limits don't apply. Even if
you had to bounce the signal through the interband resonance of a
heavy mass concentration in a completely different star system, the
total effective end-to-end delay (local-observer-path, of course)
would still be only seconds --- and that's if the locals start to
develop subspace technology of their own before they drown in their
own industrial waste, so we have to go stealthy.

And what's this "subspace *warp* band" nonsense, anyway? That's
messing up the physics nearly as bad as Star Trek screws up genetics
these days (and what's up with that anyway? why is our Highest Elect
Cultural Guidance Team wasting time on that? the locals here already
*know* molecular genetics; crap science fiction won't keep 'em from
building custom plagues for each other when they want to. What a
planet. Have they got working fusion powerplants? Nooooo... they
stumble on the palladium crystal fault fusion effects, pick themselves
up, and keep right on going. It can't be real --- it was discovered
in the wrong bleeking laboratory. So, do they have any useful
thermonuclear technology at all? Yeah, sure they do --- the best damn
city-killer bombs in the sector. Bloody barbarians. Gee, do I sound
like I want a transfer off this cosmic waste dump?).

Thau Rissig Glorp
Ops tech, second class
Exocultural observations division
Federal galactic survey authority, delta arm