RFC175

Network Working Group 11 June 1971 Request for Comments: 175 E. Harslem - Rand NIC 7074 J. Heafner - Rand

         Comments on "Socket Conventions Reconsidered"
         ---------------------------------------------

    We agree with the conclusions reached by Abhay, Bob, and Joel in

RFC #167, "Socket Conventions Reconsidered," (see RFC #129, scheme #4) -- especially the necessity for a major NCP overhaul.

    Our main departure in thinking from RFC #167 concerns the socket

length. (See RFC #164, page 21.) Since there is an apparently serious TIP storage consideration, Rand- assigned sockets will have the high-order 16 bits zero.

    For the particular programs (current and pending) that Rand must

access, repeatability of socket name (RFC #167, page 3) is not necessary for the user process and also not necessary for the server process except for initial contact (ICP) sockets.

Our current use of socket names is diagrammed below.

O           15 16             23 24          30 31
---------------------------------------------------

| | | | |

---------------------------------------------------
 ^              ^                 ^              ^
 |_ zero        |                 |              |_ gender
                |                 |
                |                 |_ zero for initial
                |                    contact, otherwise
                |                    dynamically assigned
                |                    by 3rd level user
                |                    program
                |_ administratively assigned (fixed
                   and associated with programs)

(NOTE: This scheme corresponds exactly with both UCSB and UCLA/CCN conventions).

   [ This RFC was put into machine readable form for entry ]
   [ into the online RFC archives by BBN Corp. under the   ]
   [ direction of Alex McKenzie.                   12/96   ]