CAP/doc/cap.notes

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CAP note: last revision March, 1988
General CAP notes.
------------------
The major thing that should be recognized about CAP is that the
protocol is carried by each process. Unlike TCP/IP, none of the
protocol is carried in the kernel. In the design of CAP, we stayed
away from having asynchronous events. This makes programming the
protocol code and the user code much easier. However, because of
this, the programmer must allow the protocol to run. This is
generally done by issuing "abSleep" (scheduler) calls at regular
intervals. If you fail to allow protocol to run, then you'll see all
sorts of aberrant behavior. In general, a good rule of thumb is that
you shouldn't allow more than about a second to pass before allowing
protocol to run. [Thus, things like blocking reads or writes will
generally mess things up royally].
See doc/sched.notes for a full description.
LAP/UDP encapsulation
---------------------
When using UDP encapsulation (often in CAP referred to as KIP or KIP
encapsulation), the only LAP protocol that may be used is DDP. Doing
otherwise would require modifications to the encapsulation method.
Basically, the encapsulation method assumes that UDP sockets map to
DDP sockets in some what and thus all UDP packets are a DDP packet of
some type.
For this reason, a LAP module is not included for UDP encapsulation.
Note: lib/cap/ablap.c is inclued only for reference.
NBP server
----------
A number of extensions were undertaken for the current UNIX nbp
server. These are documented in doc/nbp.ext.
ABMISC
------
A number of miscellaneous, but useful routines are listed in
abmisc.doc.
ATP/ASP/PAP
-----------
See atp.notes, asp.notes, and pap.notes for a list of some of the
major differences of the CAP implementation of these protocols from
the "Inside AppleTalk/MacIntosh" documentation. Note: the interfaces
are now out of sync with the "Inside" documentation.
ZIP
---
The ATP GetZoneList call has been implemented. The routines are:
* OSErr atpgetzonelist(int start_index, byte buffer,
atpUserDataType zipuserbytes)
atpgetzonelist sends a get zone list command to the current bridge.
start_index is the first zone index to start enumeration at (very
first is always 1). This is used to get all the zones when they are
larger than a single atp response -- zip only allows a single pkt
response.
buffer should be of size atpMaxData and contains the returned packet
if there is no error.
zipuserbytes will be set to the atp user data bytes a packet is
returned from the bridge successfully.
* OSErr GetZoneList(char *zones[], int nzones, int *realcount)
GetZoneList repeatedly calls atpgetzonelist until all zones have been
retrieved from the bridge. It returns the count of zones in realcnt.
It will return up to nzones pointers to zone names in the array zones.
The memory for the zone name is allocated by GetZoneList and should be
deallocated by going down the list or by use of FreeZoneList.
The zone list and realcount returned should not be considered valid if
noErr is not returned.
* FreeZoneList(char *chararray[], int cnt)
Goes through the passed array of character pointers up to cnt and
does a free on the pointers. A free is issued only if the pointer is
not null. In addition, the pointers are cleared.
* char *GetMyZone()
returns the zone the program is running in. It does not ask the
bridge for the current zone because it may not correspond.
Overwriting the returned value is strongly discouraged.
VERSION INFO
------------
CAP version information is now part of the library. The call
what_cap_version returns a pointer to a structure of type
"cap_version". All values are pointers to ascii strings. See
appletalk.h for the contents.