Concensus Call on Urgent Pointer.

["John Hufferd/San Jose/IBM" <hufferd@us.ibm.com>]

With my TC Hat on:
I think the point has been made and mostly agreed, that if we are going to
use the Urgent Pointer to aid the HW NICs, that a negotiated approach
should be used.  It should be negotiated for each direction (Send &
Receive) by both sides.  That is, the direction in which the Initiator
sends data to the Target, and the direction where the Initiator receives
data from the Target. (And similarly on the Target Side.)

We are saying that the Initiator should agree to send Urgent Pointer
information, and may agree to receive Urgent Pointer data. (same thing in
reverse on the Target side).  It has also been suggested that perhaps the
specification read "The Initiator Should use the Urgent Pointer when
sending data, and May accept it on receiving data."  If any initiator does
not want to use the Urgent Data, it should say so appropriately in the
initial Login.  In this way, since some believe that the biggest impact to
SW will be in the Receive Side, SW implementations may respond Negatively
for Receiving Data, and Positively, (or not at all) for sending Data.  I
would expect certain HW implementations would want to always use Urgent
Pointer and will therefore respond Positively (or not at all) to the
exchange (assuming Positive is the default here).

There seems gathering support around this compromise position and I am now
calling this  to be a rough consensus.  A lot of folks, on both sides, have
moved a long way to tolerate this compromise.  I am,  therefore, hoping
that the rough consensus holds and we are done with this item.

TC Hat off.


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John L. Hufferd
Senior Technical Staff Member (STSM)
IBM/SSG San Jose Ca
(408) 256-0403, Tie: 276-0403
Internet address: hufferd@us.ibm.com