Subject: Few Questions on MEGACOP

From: Shalini Philip <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 17:19:15 +0530

Hello Brian,

        I have a few questions on MEGACOP on which I would like your
feedback.

1.  The definition of mId allows one to specify only the device name. In
this case how
     would the IP Address be derived from the device name.

2.  What are Root properties? Are they defined in packages and can they
be
     extended?

3. The Permanent terminations have packages associated with them.
However for
    ephemeral terminations, how do we associate the supported packages ?

    This is required because in the commands from MGC for ephemeral
terminations,
    the descriptors viz., event descriptor, signal descriptor etc might
reference some
    package. How can a MG validate if that (ephemeral) termination
supports the
    mentioned package ?

4. The Annexure on Transport using UDP and ALF is not jelling well with
the rest
    of the MEGACOP draft. Most of the things are legacy from MGCP. For
example,
    there is a description of the usage of Response acknowledgement
field, while
    nowhere else in the draft there is a mention of it. This section
definitely needs some
    rewording. There are a couple of questions on Transport layer and
ALF :
    (a) What is the meaning of Transactions used in Annexe E? Is it the
same as defined
          in Section 8.
    (b) Section 8, Page 34, the 2nd paragraph "Applications SHOULD
implement
        an application level timer per transaction.". Is this timer
        same as the retransmission timer provided by ALF? Also the word
        "Application" here is referring to the stack above the ALF or
the user application of the
        stack?
    (c)Is the unit of transfer between ALF and the stack above a MEGACOP
Message (sequence of
        MEGACOP Transactions) or a MEGACOP Transaction ?
    (d) This is related to question (c) above. The ALF after
transmitting a message would start a
       retransmission timer, waiting  for the response. On its expiry,
what is the retransmission unit - is it the full
      message or the modified message (depending on the transactions
that have been
      responded to) ?

5. What is the significance of loopControl(Step/loop) and
processControl(process
    / discard) fields of  BufferedEventHandling parameter in Termination
State
    Descriptor?

--
Regards,

Shalini Philip
Ficon Technology
E-Mail : mailto:[email-masked]
Web    : http://www.ficon-tech.com

---

From: Shalini Philip <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 15:16:43 +0530

Hi Brian,

    Thanks a lot for your reply and clarifying my doubts on the issues. I have
one more question on your response.

> Something external, DNS for example

In the draft, the device name is defined as a character string without having
any structure (that is the draft does not define device name to have a domain
name). Do we assume it to have a domain name as a part of it ? or will the
structure of device name depend on the proprietary applications ?

Regards,

Shalini Philip
Ficon Technology

---

From: Brian Rosen <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:30:04 -0400

> structure of device name depend on the proprietary applications ?
There are people who think that a domain name is NOT the
only thing that is appropriate to use as the mId, and in
particular, if you are not on an IP network, things like
DNS are not appropriate.  For this reason, mIds are not restricted to
device@domain-name.

I personally expect this will be the normal naming convention
for IP connected devices.  Such a convention could be part
of a profile for example.