Subject: Comments on MALLOC API

From: Steve Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 13:37:20 -0500

Here are some comments on the MALLOC API (draft-ietf-malloc-api-04.txt).
Discussion is welcome.

Thanks,

Steve

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There should be a separate Lease abstract data type. This type would
include a lease identifier (such as a MADCAP Client Identifier) and
other information about the lease, such as the lifetime, set of
addresses, start time, etc. A variable of this type should be an out
parameter for alloc_multicast_addr and an in parameter for
change_multicast_addr_lifetime and deallocate_multicast_addr. The
current model of passing a MulticastAddressRange to the latter two
functions won't work, since there might be several leases for the same
address range (perhaps allocated by different clients). Also, MADCAP
requires the client to supply the Client Identifier in order to change
or release a lease.

We should be using MulticastAddressRangeList or MulticastAddressSet or
something like that instead of MulticastAddressRange, since MADCAP
servers can return several non-contiguous addresses for a single lease.

The query_multicast_addr_lifetime function can be replaced by looking at
fields of the Lease.

The "open question" regarding who can change or deallocate a lease is no
longer open. As you say, this is a policy decision and not part of the
API. However, you might want to warn in the description of the Lease
type (or in the Security Considerations section) that the Lease type may
include a secret, which must be supplied in order to change or
deallocate a lease.