Echo (computing) - Terminological Confusion: Echo Is Not Duplex

Terminological Confusion: Echo Is Not Duplex

Whilst local echo and remote echo are sometimes referred to as "half-duplex" and "full-duplex", those latter appellations are strictly incorrect, and are misleading (see duplex for their correct meanings). Whilst local echo is often used with half-duplex transmission, so that bandwidth is not wasted upon remotely echoing data from the remote end of the communications channel, it is not the same as half-duplex transmission. A full-duplex communications channel can still employ local echo, and a half-duplex channel can still (albeit wastefully) employ remote echo, or no echo at all.

Indeed, for example, that is the case for echoplex error checking, which requires full-duplex communication, so that received data can be echoed back as they are being received.

Similarly, for another example, in the case of the TELNET communications protocol a local echo protocol operates on top of a full-duplex underlying protocol. The TCP connection over which the TELNET protocol is layered provides a full-duplex connection, with no echo, across which data may be sent in either direction simultaneously. Whereas the Network Virtual Terminal that the TELNET protocol itself incorporates is a half-duplex device with (by default) local echo.