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[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index] RE: iSCSI: No Framing> > The word "proprietary" is an unfortunately typical of Doug: > > (1) assuming that standardization of certain components and/or interfaces > > is/are necessary to the use of FIM, > If done using a protocol employing the TCP transport, a layer must be added > ahead of TCP, which would be, without documentation, a "privately owned" > layer. Privately owned as such details of this layer are not shared > publicly. This layer may be hardware or an intelligent adapter, or it could > be a software solution within a memory starved CPU. Without documentation > describing the information exchanged between the application and TCP, > together with the states involved in this process, any efforts to > extrapolate the details of this layer are likely to venture into proprietary > areas. A means of avoiding this problem would be to document the basics and > thereby make such a process public. It would also afford an ability for > review. What I am failing to understand is how what you describe is any different than the variablity of the design of existing NIC cards. Virtually every NIC card needs its own custom driver for each OS that is supported. Implementing FIM is no different than the multitude of existing checksumming offload NICs. It is true that the hardware is using knowledge of the upper layer protocols, but it is all within the confines of the implementation details. There is no wire protocol implication here. In order to "standardize" these techniques the IETF will be dictating hardware design and/or protocol stack design. While this might be useful for an industry consortium to make portability of software easier, it is not a fundemental IETF issue. In what is essentially an implementation specific communications between layers of a software stack, how can you standardize something that will be uniquely different depending on if the OS uses STREAMS, BSD sockets, Windows XYZ, or custom OS frozbits. This doesn't make sense for the IETF, you may consider going to SNIA to standardize implemenation details. If I am not understanding your point, I suggest that it would be useful for you to write a couple paragraphs suitable for inclusion in a standards document that describes how you would standardize the FIM specification. Without such a concrete proposal I believe we are all just flailing at amorphous ideas and making no progress on this issue. -David
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