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From: phl01@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Lovell)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.appletalk
Subject: How does FastPath 4 seeding work?
Keywords: FastPath, phase 2, seeding
Message-ID: <1991Apr10.033857.7487@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz>
Date: 10 Apr 91 03:38:57 GMT
Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Lines: 28


I've wondered for a long time how FastPath 4 seeding of
appletalk settings works. Specifically,

- Does the FastPath seed actively, by finding another gateway
  and doing some sort of lookup on it (perhaps a ZIP lookup),
  or does it seed passively by monitoring appletalk traffic?

- Will a FastPath that has been set to seed AppleTalk phase 2
  information off its ethernet interface only seed from a
  fully configured gateway? Or will it seed from the first
  gateway it can find?

- Does a FastPath that has been set to seed only seed at startup,
  or does it continuously update the information it has been
  seeded with (in effect, "reseed" itself) every so often?

If someone could shed some light on the issue, I'd be extremely
grateful. If seeded data is continuously updated (as a recent
posting seemed to indicate), then seeding would be very useful
in an environment such as mine where zone names and the ethertalk
phase 2 range changes fairly regularly. If it doesn't continuously
update, seeding could result in anarchy.

Thanks in advance,

Tim Hammett, Department of Botany, Auckland University.
(phl01@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz)