Re: Ada The Best Language?

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <slrn9lra55.hk.lutz@taranis.iks-jena.de>, Lutz Donnerhacke says...
>
>* Ted Dennison wrote:
>>2) Even though either language can do it just fine, I don't think "select"
>>support is that big of a deal anyway. Most serious network servers

>Teergrubing requires select or poll to prevent a dDoS.

I went and read up on this (and an interesting trick it is, too). The idea
generally seems to be that you use the SMTP protocol to trick the client into
keeping his connection open indefinitely once you determine that he is a
spammer. Then you can call his ISP and get his account yanked, or whatever. Its
sort of like stalling a credit-card thief at the checkout counter until the cops
arrive. :-)

It looks like the issue here is that someone could get annoyed that you are
doing this to him, and just start establishing tons of connections until you
can't accept any more, thus preventing use by real users. However, it still
seems debatable whether this is needed or not. The teergrubing FAQ implies not,
but it does appear that some folks writing mail transport agents have been
worried enough about it to go ahead and use "select" in a single thread. 

Personally, I don't see where using a single thread with a limited number of
possible connections is that different, unless you don't have a limit on the
number of connection-servicing tasks (which would seem dangerous to start with).
There's still a resource limit: A DDoS-dork could use up all your connections
either way.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com