Concerning the proposal to reform the Internet protocol, a reader writes:
Hmm. Individual IP packets don’t have return (sender) addresses, but TCP connections do, since replies have to be sent somewhere for the connection to work. Since both web (HTTP) and mail (SMTP) are built on top of TCP… I’m not sure the protocol is very much to blame for Bad Anonymous Behavior on the internet really. Is it?
Good point. Way back in my formative years, I decided that, having written a network of my own, I didn’t really wish to study another one in great depth, so I can’t claim great knowledge in this area. However, it does occur to me that Denial of Service attacks would be affected by the proposed changes, as it would permit tracing attacks.
