RE: Concensus Call on Urgent Pointer.

["GUPTA,SOMESH (HP-Cupertino,ex1)" <somesh_gupta@hp.com>]

I beg to differ. My reading is that the only compromise
on which consensus exists is closer to what Daniel Smith
indicated.

My concern is as follows: Without explicit clarity on the
behavior of urgent pointer under all conditions, and ensuring
that the host or TOE only TCP stacks behave accordingly,
we will have an interoperability problem at customer sites.
In such cases it will become a finger pointing game between
the provider of the initiator and that of the target.

So it is better to be able to able to turn it off from either
side (sender or receiver). Now one alternative that may be
suggested is to configure the receiver to either request the
feature or not - but that means two things - one is that
the receiver is able to work with or without URG pointer,
the other is that you have to come up with an external config
mechanism. Based on the first assumption, it is then ok for
the receiver not to depend on receiving the URG pointer if the
sender as part of the negotiation says that it cannot
send URG pointer.

The interesting case is where the receiver is unable to function
properly without receiving the URG pointer. That is where
when there are interoperability issues, there will be a lot
of finger pointing and customer pressure etc.

Somesh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Wakeley [mailto:matt_wakeley@agilent.com]
> Sent: Thursday, November 16, 2000 5:21 PM
> To: ips@ece.cmu.edu
> Subject: Re: Concensus Call on Urgent Pointer.
> 
> 
> I think the spec should say:
> 
> "During login, if the target requests use of the Urgent 
> Pointer, then the
> initator Must use the Urgent Pointer when
> sending data.  If the target does not request use of the 
> Urgent Pointer, then
> the initiator Must Not use the Urgent Pointer when sending data."
> 
> and likewise...
> 
> "During login, if the initiator requests use of the Urgent 
> Pointer, then the
> target Must use the Urgent Pointer when
> sending data.  If the initiator does not request use of the 
> Urgent Pointer,
> then the target Must Not use the Urgent Pointer when sending data."
> 
> -Matt
>