Juggling with packets: floating data storage
Most of us, the authors of this paper, have attempted to juggle with
three or more apples, oranges, or other fragile ballistic objects.
The effect is usually rather pathetic, but most adept juggler padawans
sooner or later learn to do it without inflicting excessive collateral
damage.
A particularly bright juggler trainee may notice that, as long as he
continues to follow a simple procedure, at least one of the objects is
in the air at all times, and that he has to hold at most two objects
in his hands at once. Yet, each and every apple goes thru his hands
every once in a while, and it is possible for him to recover it at
will.
He may then decide the entire process is extremely boring and go back
to his computer. And while checking his mail, an educated juggler may
notice that a typical network service has but one duty: to accept and
process data coming from a remote system, and take whatever steps it
deems appropriate based on its interpretation of the data. Many of
those services do their best to behave robustly and be fault-tolerant
- and, why not, to supply useful feedback about the transaction.
