Assessment of ARPANET protocols

This paper presents some theoretical and practical motivations for the redesign of the ARPANET communication protocols. Issues concerning multipacket messages, Host retransmission, duplicate detection, sequencing, and acknowledgment are discussed. Simplifications to the IMP/IMP protocol are proposed on the assumption that new Host level protocols are adopted. Familiarity with the current protocol designs is probably necessary since many of the arguments refer to details in the present protocol design.