Moreover…
In-order stream delivery could suffer long periods of paralysis, waiting for byte N to be received before delivering byte N + 1. Meanwhile, undelivered data would be occupying expensive storage space.
- So out-of-order delivery is needed.
- So we must enable unlimited concurrent transmissions.
- So data must be structured in identifiable bundles for accountability and concurrent retransmission; not in streams.
Transmission of any bundle can take days or weeks.
- So any number of bundle transmissions might be in progress at the moment a computer is rebooted or power cycled.
- So retransmission buffers should reside in non-volatile storage to minimize risk of massive transmission failure.