Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!TERMINUS.UMD.EDU!davidc
From: davidc@TERMINUS.UMD.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc
Subject: An attempt to rekindle interface discussions...
Message-ID: <8801280234.AA14753@terminus.UMD.EDU>
Date: 28 Jan 88 02:34:25 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 42


    It appears the pcipdriver mailing list died without resolving
anything other than we need to resolve stuff.  I guess the attempt to
standardize on a way to talk to an internet TSR was too late, since
several people had already invested lots of effort defining their own. 
I would like to resurrect the interface discussions in order to attempt
to standardize on an application to transport layer interface library. 
This would seem to me to be the easiest thing for us to agree on since
standardizing on a transport layer interface would be a relatively
painless operation.  No one would have to rewrite anything, they'd just
have to add a new library to their developer's toolkit or whatever. 

    The issues involved with a transport layer interface that I feel
need to be resolved are the following:

    o   Which interface?

        The two major contenders in previous discussions were BSD
        Sockets and SYSV TLI.  I personally would prefer to standardize
        on BSD sockets.  I readily admit they aren't the best things
        created, but I feel they have the largest following in the
        TCP/IP world.
        
    o   Which calls to support?

        Do you support read() and write() on BSD sockets?  How about
        ioctl() and send/recvmsg()?
        
    o   How in depth do you support the calls?

        Do you support the backlog in listen()?  Which options in
        get/setsockopt() will be supported?
        
    o   How to provide an asynchronous interface?
    
        Does TLI provide anyway to do this?
        
    I'm sure there are a lot of other things that need to be discussed
along with the above issues.  Anyone care to comment?

-drc