[E-Lang] remote comms: Timeouts and Connection Failure

[Karp, Alan]

MarcS wrote:
> 
> The keepalive stream transmutes lots of NAPs into BURPs, thus 
> making them
> tractable as you point out above.  There are NAPs which 
> keepalive streams do
> not convert to BURPs, for which you are correct, a default 
> policy is still
> required. 

We are in agreement.  Keepalives are good for turning potential silent
failures from NAPs into BURPs, and I am not aware of any harm, other than
resource consumption, from using keepalives.

I think this distinction also relates to Zooko's comments about the
inappropriateness of the connection model.  Keepalives are saying something
about the ability of the two parties to communicate, a connection concept.
NAP is really a statement about the promptness of responses, something that
may or may not have anything to do with connections.  Thus, an application
default policy for dealing with NAPs without worrying about their cause is
useful. A default policy on keepalives turns certain communication NAPs into
BURPs, reducing the number of NAPs the application sees, is also useful.   

_________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Decision Technology Department
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories MS 1U-2
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 857-3967, fax (650) 857-6278
https://ecardfile.com/id/Alan_Karp
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp/
 
>