[OpenIDAP-devel] Some Thoughts

[Phil B. <ph...@pe...>]

I've been thinking a little bit about the details of the protocol.  I like the idea of opening up multiple sockets for different aspects of the protocol.  For instance, having a TCP socket open between two nodes for session protocol.  (Similar to the way that SIP works for VoIP, or the way that FTP works)  This socket would have some kind of ASCII protocol similar to HTTP or SIP that would allow the two endpoints to deal with the details of the rest of the communication.

The ASCII protocol allows for easy debugging.  Then if the nodes decided to simply have a polling response type conversation (because that was the limit of one ends capabilities) then that conversation would be binary and take place through a different socket.  It might even be possible to have all the communication take place through this one socket (perhaps that is the only thing that the serial port communications could do.)

Asynchronous data change type events could be negotiated on another socket, historical data on another and multicast producer / consumer traffic on another.  OpenDAX has multiple sockets for different types of data and it makes the programming easier.

The ports should be known in advance (in lieu of being negotiated like FTP) so that firewall configuration, tunneling and port forwarding aren't too complex.

What do you guys think?

Phil