Subject: RE: Login Failure and Sessions

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 15:41:10 -0400

> I understand your concerns, but the retrial number N is really a
> configuration parameter. It is not unusual to leave this type 
> of parameters
> for run-time configuration, take the windowing protocol as an 
> example. The
> size of the window is not fixed in the spec.

You didn't address the problem I presented: the need to craft a
deterministic state diagram.  If what you're saying, though, is that you
prefer option 2 (blast the connection after N failures) with the value of N
(0 <= N <= inf) to be determined by the server operator, I can work with
that.  That's at least easier to describe formally than "it's a policy
issue". ;-)

-Scott-

---

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2002 09:09:31 -0400

For what it matters, speaking as a state machinist and not as the chair:

        |
        |  /-------------------\
        |  |                   |
        v  v                   |
    +-------+                  |
    | login |--fail < N tries--/
    +-------+
     |     |
  success  fail
     |     >= N tries
     |     \
     |      ------------------>
     v

This is roughly how I would draw option 2 - not that I am suggesting 
that option 2 is the preferred solution.  This is a shorthand, 
strictly speaking you shouldn't have state (the value of N) on the 
arcs.  But I think this would fly in a protocol specification.

-- 
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Edward Lewis                                          +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer