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Date:      Fri, 29 Jan 1999 17:41:40 -0800 (PST)
From:      Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>
To:        Archie Cobbs <archie@whistle.com>
Cc:        Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, net@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: netgraph...
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95.990129172125.17781D-100000@current1.whistle.com>
In-Reply-To: <199901292354.PAA01659@bubba.whistle.com>

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On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Archie Cobbs wrote:
> 
> Poul-
> What did you think of the idea of having each node contain two
> new methods for encoding and decoding ASCII strings? I say methods
> but really they would just understand two new generic message types.
> 
> Then ngctl could send control messages to encode and decode, while
> 'normal' control messages between nodes stayed in binary form.

The whole idea of asking the kernel to translate a message destined for
the kernel makes me feel a little ill.

My personal thoughts are:

Either the module can just translate it itself, (I'm not sure of argc/argv
or just a string), Or maybe it can send out a "format string" type
template that allows an interpretter to pack structs to its
specifications. 

e.g.
"23=[-A %d.%d.%d.%d]->8:8:8:8"

(message 23 is recognosed by the -A flag and wants the following 4 decimal
entities packed into 4 8bit fields)  A single standard message could
deliver all the messages a node is expecting.  and we could probably do a
better 'language' if we spent more than the 60 seconds I did on this one.. 
kind of liek an RPC specification, but human->RPC rather than
native-binary->RPC. The cost of the interpretter would be born (shared) by
all the nodes

The first is really simple but I don't really like interpeters in the
kernel. The 2nd is not quite as simple (though from the node's point of
view it is even simpler), but to my mind is even more elegant.

This in addition to other suggestions already made..

julian
> 
> It also respects KISS, by keeping all the node-specific code
> together.

As I said.. it makes my hair stand on end, but I cant put my finger on the
reason.

> 
> -Archie
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Archie Cobbs   *   Whistle Communications, Inc.  *   http://www.whistle.com
> 


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