Subject: The Root Termination

From: Brian Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1999 14:26:40 -0400

There has always been some objections to the root termination
idea.  The Berlin draft revives the discussion with this
statement:

NOTE: There are objections to calling the entire gateway a termination.  The
use of the root identifier in commands is restricted to ServiceChange and
AuditValue & AuditCapabilities.  It is proposed to remove the concept of
Root Termination, and add an extra parameter to these commands to indicate
that the entire gateway is addressed instead of a set of Terminations.

My usual example of the use for this construct is the maximum number of
terminations per context.  In some gateways, this will be 2, implying that
the gateway cannot handle a 3 way call.
In others it would be 3, and in others it would be more.

In this example, the parameter is read-only, and thus would only appear in
an AuditValue return.  However, there are likely to be parameters that are
MG specific, but not termination specific that are read-write, and thus
would appear in a Modify.

If someone has a specific proposal for how to read and write values that are
one per MG, please make a proposal.  Otherwise,
the Root Termination provides this function quite nicely.  It has an
additional advantage that a package can be defined which adds parameters to
it.

Brian