Subject: RE: [midcom] draft-ietf-midcom-requirements-01.txt

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 09:36:01 +0100

Bob,

> Section 6.2 talks about Deregistration. Is this suppose to be an explicit
> function or is this normal closing of the MIDCOM Session? If it is normal
> closing, I disagree with the requirement to close all the pin holes (see
> above).

I think there was some earlier discussion of this point. The point about
Agent de-registration is that the session between the Middlebox and a
specific Agent has come to an end. (This is not the same as an individual
application session across the Middlebox has come to an end as the
relationship between an Agent and Middlebox may survive multiple individual
"application sessions".) Rather it may be something along the lines of the
Agent wishes to break the relationship with the Middlebox to do a system
restart. In this case the Agent is sending an explicit notification to the
Middlebox that it wishes to come "off the air". In such circumstances the
Middlebox can have no future knowledge of when to close poin-holes that are
already open. It therefore seems logical to free up all the resources on the
Middlebox that the Agent had requested. i.e. close all the associated
pin-holes. Otherwise when the Agent disappears in such circumstances the
Middlebox will not know what to do.

regards

Richard

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From: "Bob Penfield" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 08:09:52 -0400

> Middlebox will not know what to do.

That's what I was afraid of. If I have redundant MIDCOM Agents, and one of
them needs to be restarted for whatever reason, I want to keep the pin-holes
open because there is still another MIDCOM agent present to close the
pin-holes when their sessions end.