Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!rutgers!cbmvax!amix!skrenta
From: skrenta@amix.commodore.com (Rich Skrenta)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Port collisions in Amoeba
Message-ID: <2596@amix.commodore.com>
Date: 13 Jun 91 17:15:33 GMT
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Unix Development
Lines: 20

What happens if two processes or servers choose the same port address?
Presumably one could broadcast a locate request to see if a chosen port
was already in use.  However, this has two problems:

	1)  if you find one that is already in use, security is compromised,
	    since you now know the secret port number to listen on.

	2)  the locate request may fail, but later a remote service could
	    publish its port number locally within your domain, thus
	    creating a conflict.

Certainly the likelyhood of port collisions is small, but collision are
possible (definitely if many sites were using poor random number generators).
And with a large network of Amoeba systems, it seems that occaisional
collisions would be certain to happen sooner or later.  How does Amoeba deal
with this?

Rich
--
skrenta@amix.commodore.com