Subject: new internet draft on ZMAAP

From: Erik Guttman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 08:00:59 +0200 (MET DST)

Folks,

We need reviews of the following documents.  

ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-zeroconf-zmaap-01.txt
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-zeroconf-zmaap-api-00.txt

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Changes since draft-00 of ZMAAP are:

1) Simplified presentation and protocol rules.
2) Caching is different: hosts MAY cache other's AIUs but need not
3) Attempts at compatibility with AAP has been dropped
4) API issues are considered
5) Session management implications added - including interaction
   with SAP and SDP
6) All allocations use relative, not absolute times

One suggestion, which the authors pursued, then rejected, was the
notion of having no lifetimes for allocations.  This would mean
that addresses only would be considered allocated if there were
one or more active defenders & simplify the protocol.  

This worked in principal, but made caching of allocations 
impossible.  In the case of link local IPv4 multicast addresses, 
we will likely only be able to allocate a small number (there are 
only about 200 free addresses of this kind total).  In this case, 
caching is imperative:  You would have to be able to keep track 
of which addresses were allocated so you could pick a 
likely-to-be-non-conflicting one to claim.

The API document is derived from the Abstract Multicast Allocation 
API, RFC 2771.  The document describes new abstract APIs and how
certain RFC 2771 APIs do not apply.  There are also two concrete
APIs (for C and Java).

Erik