The IP over ATM Mailing List Archive by date

[Grenville Armitage <gja@thumper.bellcore.com>]

Peoples,

I have an apology to make. About 3 days ago I sat down and
went just a little crazy with the re-write of ipmc-04.
In addition to the set of diffs I'd been requesting comments
on, I was not completely happy with the clarity of the whole
document.

So I rewrote it. All.

The new, version 05 edition of the ipmc spec involves
only incremental changes to the actual protocol as defined
in ipmc-04 (with one or two really neat additions).
(So there are no reasons for panic if you've recently
started implementing using ipmc-04 and the published diffs. :)

However, almost the entire document has been restructured
with the goal of separating out the functions of cluster
members, MARSs, and multicast servers.

The introductory text contains a more detailed description
of VC meshes and multicast servers, their place, and their
limitations.

Two classes of MARS have been explicitly identified:

	- Class I, which contains the minimum functionality
	  required to support intra-cluster multicasting using
	  VC meshes.

	- Class II, a superset of Class I, with additional
	  functionality required to support multicast servers
	  as an alternative to VC meshes.

The endpoint (cluster member) behaviour has been tied together
in a section independent of multicast server (MCS) issues
and description.

Some new hooks have been provided for future work on developing
a redundant/backup MARS mechanism.

And I now have a 'contents' page :-)

draft-ietf-ipatm-ipmc-05.txt has been posted to Internet-Drafts,
and so should appear at all your favourite sites in the next
few days. It is available now on my ipmc web page:

ftp://thumper.bellcore.com/pub/gja/www/i-drafts.html

Enjoy.

gja
---
Grenville Armitage, Research Scientist,      MRE 2P-340, 445 South Street
Internetworking Research Group, Bellcore.      Morristown, NJ, 07960, USA
(email) gja@thumper.bellcore.com  (voice) +1 201 829 2635 {.. 2504 (fax)}