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From: pae@athena.mit.edu (Philip Earnhardt)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.misc
Subject: Re: RPC Technologies
Summary: Status of the ISO RPC Standards
Message-ID: <1990Sep7.004206.17225@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 7 Sep 90 00:42:06 GMT
Sender: Phil Earnhardt (onecom!wldrdg!pae)
Organization: Netwise, Inc.
Lines: 55

In <5370@ptsfa.PacBell.COM> jag@PacBell.COM (Jim Goncher) writes:

> [questions about the status of the ISO/OSI RPC Standard]

The number of the beast is ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 21 N 4927. This is a
working draft--the first of 4 steps in becoming a standard. I'm not
sure if such standards are available from the traditional sources for
ISO documents--the copy I have has the phone number for ANSI on the
cover -- (212) 642-4932.

ROSE is used in an RPC-like fashion in X.500 and X.400 applications.
I have never directly worked with ROSE; my understanding is that it
contains the protocol units for doing RPC. However, there are other
issues that must be addressed for a standalone RPC--handling of
binding and external language interfaces. Proponents of ROSE may argue
that ROSE adequately deals with such issues--these debates are part
of what's going on in the standards bodies meetings.

The proposed RPC standard is a "Layer 7 and Beyond" protocol--the "and
Beyond" is addressing things like the language interface to RPC. ROSE
is certainly a [mechanism for creating a] layer 7 protocol.

In earlier discussions on this group Mishkin has tried to discount the
importance of Netwise's using ISO 8327 (Session Layer Protocol) and
ISO 8822 (Presentation Layer Protocol) in its new products:

<4bc8788d.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> Mishkin says:

> Get ALL your facts straight.  First of all, there's currently no ISO
> standard for RPC.  Second, the protocol NCS 2.0 defines for running over
> COTPs adheres as closely as possible to how we imagine such an ISO standard
> will appear and fit into the OSI model.  This includes presentation
> negotiation and the rest of the ball of mud.  Believe me, I've had
> T-CONNECT through A-CONNECT up to my ears.

If RPC is a Layer 7 protocol, the *exact* way that it would fit into a
Profiled OSI Stack is on top if the standard OSI Presentation and
Session layers.

Several quesitons:

1. Do the NCS developers think that OSI RPC is going to be a layer 7
   standard? If not, why not? 

2. If the answer to #1 is yes, what protocols do they think will be used
   at Layer 6 and Layer 5? If not ISO 8327 and ISO 8824, what other
   protocls will be used?

3. Your second sentence above talks about NCS on top of COTPs. What
   about NCS on top of CLTPs? Will these be ISO compliant? Will they
   use the ISO connection-oriented or connectionless upper layer protocols?

Phil Earnhardt          Netwise, Inc.  2477 55th St.  Boulder, CO 80301
Phone:303-442-8280      UUCP: onecom!wldrdg!pae
My opinions do not reflect any official position of Netwise.