Packet TCP/IP handled by the OS

[Christopher Piggott <wz2b@vivanet.vivanet.com>]

There is one thing I don't understand about handling TCP/IP at the OS level.
I have tried several times setting up routing paths from a PC running
Winsock (and also an IBM RS/6000 running AIX) to a NOS gateway on my ethernet,
to talk from the Winsock machine out over the radio.  It has never worked
very well for me.  My feeling has been that the reason is that the winsock
(and AIX) tcp/ip systems are not very well suited to a packet radio
environment, where they must deal with a much higher probability of a lost
frame than, Ethernet.

The most frustrating part for me is that there is no "tcp kick" command to
get it going again :-)

I read some (old) discussion of this in the tcp-group archives, from earlier
this year.  If the intent is to handle most of the communications at the
OS level, and less by a "specialized" program like NOS, are the OS's going
to have to be drastically modified to handle this?  Or is a parametric "tune-
up" enough to make it work?

--Chris