RFC 50 (rfc50) - Page 1 of 2

Comments on the Meyer Proposal

E. Harslen
                                                  J. Heafner
Network Working Group                             RANL
Request for Comments:    50                       4/30/70


                     Comments on the Meyer Proposal
                     ------------------------------

We find the Meyer proposal (Note #46) to be the most acceptable
to dare, for exactly the reasons that he enumerates; viz., simple,
suffices for most planned uses of the Network, easy to implement,
can be extended.  It does not encompass everything that has been
suggested recently, however, we do agree with the items that are
proposed and we feel that the missing features are probably not
worth doing battle over and thus delaying the specification.

We make the following comments on the seven issues rasied in
Note #47.

   1)  We agree with Steve that dynamic reconnection will later
       be required for more sophisticated uses of the Network.
       We also agree with the Project MAC people that it
       unnecessary initially.  A better job can be done of dynamic
       reconnection given some Network experience and the specific
       needs of its use.

   2)  INT is easy to implement and serves a useful purpose.

   3)  We favor including a sub-field for instance tag identifier.
       We see the need for both cases; a) where multiple processes
       should appear indistinguishable, and b) where a given
       user owning multiple processes must distinguish among
       them.  Those program parts that should not distinguish
       among processes should simply ignore the instance tag.
       Tom's suggestion to use part of the user number sub-field
       merely reduces the combined length of sub-fields from 32
       bits to 24 bits; the problem remains.

   4)  We disagree with both Steve and MAC in that no special
       structure should be imposed on the data transmitted.  We
       prefer the "message data type" mentioned by E. I. Ancona,
       Note #42, page 1.  An example of its use was cited in
       Note #39, page 2, transmit vs broadcast.