Subject: capabilities

From: Gilbert Moineau <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 93 13:40:00 PDT

I finally had the time to sit down and read all the e-mail sent on this 
group; here are my comments.

1- Wayne stated in his first e-mail "Capabilities SIGlet Kickoff"

>>        If a downrev router that doesn't support capabilities exchange
>>        gets the CAP_EXCH (e.g. today's 6611), it merely drops the 
datagram
>>        and no harm is done.  The end result of not replying is that a
>>        downrev router is not in the DLSw mesh.  It can still operate
>>        with other downrev routers and other routers for which CAP_EXCH
>>        is optional (strongly discouraged).

I  think the "default" capabilities (no aswer to EXCHG) should be RFC 1434 
in order to be backward compatible with the 6611 and any router supporting 
the RFC. So, the Downrev routers can be in the "mesh".

2-  About the transport to use for the capabilities exchange, I agree with 
Scott that we should create a new SSP to be used on the TCP connection.

3- Directory Service/ Name server. I don't think it is always a good idea to 
just  propagate the list of known DLS switches. What we need is more a 
directory service where the user can control the topology.  In this case, 
this group should not define more than the capability to provide the DS or 
not.

4- I think the vendor ID is good and does'nt remove anything for those who 
don't like it, they can just ignore it.

I think we must try to get a consensus on these basic issues by this week, 
if we want to go ahead and define the "mecanism" and the list of feature to 
"negotiate"

 - The default values and backward compatibility to RFC 1434

 - Transport: should we use TCP or UDP for the exchange.
   (So far, almost everybody wants to use TCP)    

 - Are we defining a Name Server or not?
 There is no consensus at all on this point.

 - Vendor ID
   It should be easy to get a consensus on this one.

Wayne, do you think we can "vote" on these issues?

Gilbert Moineau
Eicon Technology

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 93 14:53:19 PDT

Gilbert -

    Thanks for the analysis and summary you've included below.

    I apologize for not being "visible" on the Capabilities SIGlet over
    the past week or so ... I've been consumed with a short-term PR
    project that just ended yesterday.  I'm headed off on vacation
    starting next Wednesday (July 28 thru Aug 2) so time is a bit short
    for me right now.

    I want to get all of the basic issues we're voting on out in the
    open before we begin the formal vote.  You've identified the most
    important ones below.  Others I'm aware of are:
	- options within the current set of DLSw features 
	- structure of the capabilities exchange

    I want to go back through all of the email over the past 2 weeks,
    summarize all of the items discussed, build a matrix for them, and
    summarize the desires of each member in that matrix.  At the bottom
    will be space to add new things that should be considered later.

    I promise to have this out sometime tomorrow (Friday) morning (West
    Coast time :-).

Wayne