[OTR-dev] Fragmenting proposal

[Ian Goldberg]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2004 at 04:27:35PM -0500, Ian Goldberg wrote:
> That's one of the big problems.  The sending of the message *doesn't*
> fail.  But at some unknown time in the future, the network may send you
> back a message saying "you recently sent a message that was too big,
> loser".  [And I'm pretty sure gaim plugins don't even *get* to see that
> error message.]

Hmmm.  I think we may have to scrap this whole fragmenting idea.  The
AIM network (at least) has a rate-limiter designed to prevent bots from
programatically flooding the network with messages.  Well, I did a
sample implementation of fragmenting, and the sending of the fragments
in rapid succession did indeed trip the rate-limiter.

Putting in delays involves more guessing as to what the network
considers enough, and is also technically difficult to do nicely (if the
guy you're talking to logs out, you're going to get a whole bunch of
error popups from gaim, ugh).

Is anyone strongly opposed to *not* handling fragmentation?  If you type
a message that's too big, you'll just get the "message too big" error,
just like you would without OTR.  [Although the max size will be a
little smaller.]  The other side will get a notice that he missed a
message that was too big.

   - Ian