Subject: comments/questions on scalability proposal

From: [email-masked] (Allen Goldberg)
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 95 14:43:35 EDT

David,

We feel that this is an excellent first step in addressing the
scalability issues discussed at the last AIW meeting. We have the
following questions/comments on the draft and we are sending it out now
in order give them some exposure before the AIW.

- Can we add a flow diagram on the actual start-up sequences including
the Capabilities Exchange message for the different cases (e.g. working
with a partner supporting this enhancement and one without) thus showing
the fact that the Capabilities Exchange occurs after the CANUREACH_ex,
etc.?

- Could you clarify in the TCP/IP Connections section what is meant by
reliable circuit data (i.e. LLC2 based circuits)?

- Could/Should we send the ICANREACH_ex and the Netbios responses back
via TCP or multi-cast. This would alleviate having UDP involved in the
picture and would ease support issues with determining the different
message transports in a start-up sequence.

- Can we clarify on what is the requirement on the support of this
enhancement (e.g. optional as opposed to being a "down-level rev")?

- I just wanted to see if others felt this way about this proposal as we
discussed it for a short time at AIW8: should we also include in this
document a mechanism for providing a backup scheme for DLSw partners?

- It is mentioned that administration is an issue that is addressed by
the document. However, it is not specifically addressed in the document
on how this is done.

- It seems sufficient to have the limitation of 64 client/server
and 127 peer to peer multi-cast groups for now and into the future.

- From the time the test frame is sent by the PU 2.0, we need to do the
CANUREACH_ex broadcast out, setup the TCP connection if one doesn't
exist, perform the Cap Ex, and then get the response to the remote
end. Is this setup process (and it is only for the first time the TCP/IP
connection is started) going to take too long for users? Will there be
complaints?

Thanks Dave, for doing such an excellent job at putting this
together. We're looking forward to further discussing this draft
at AIW9.

Allen
[email-masked]