RE: Data in SCSI Response or SCSI Data

[Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com>]

> While networks lose packets, TCP/IP connections never do, so you
> should not see this as a problem at the iSCSI layer.  If you can
> lose packets at the iSCSI layer, then having to guess at whether the
> recovery will involve two kinds of information units or one kind of
> information unit seems like an unnecessary complexity.  
> 
> This should be kept simple, providing one kind of information in 
> a packet, thus making it simpler to implement hardware that can
> route the information directly to the appropriate memory space.
> 
> If the overhead of preparing and sending two packets instead of one
> is burdensome, then we have that problem to solve as well.

If there is any kind of non-zero percentage packet lossage in a IP SAN, I
would expect, on average, better throughput and fewer flow control and
recovery disruptions if the one packet lost isn't a frag. But- hey, I'd say
that this ain't my first area of expertise so I'd be glad if the stronger
TCP/IP network types whap me upside the head if I'm wrong.

The preparing and sending of two packets is not 'burdensome'. But the case of
sending one packet instead of two can be 'advantageous' for reaons I stated
elsewhere.

-matt