FW: xAP configuration protocol

[Kevin Hawkins]

Hi Sylvan..

A feisty topic this one !

We had a lot of discussion a while back (in the original Yahoo
Group) on exactly this topic and also an entwined one which is device
discovery. This is the ability to plug devices onto a network and other
devices recognise / learn of their capabilities.
On the configuration issue there were many different suggestions, of
varying complexities, and lots of discussion about network traffic
ramifications, which becomes very important on low speed (eg RS232
transports). One of the major issues was that some devices may only be
receivers and not able to chirp up to an 'is this uid free ?' type message
or indeed be able to ask for a UID. This meant that we needed to provide a
listener that knew about UID's from such devices based on heartbeats or
data. We were not sure if there should be an address management server
(along the lines of DHCP) or whether we should strive to maintain the
decentralised nature of xAP. There could be issues too with networks that
become bridged, and we anticipated this with the allocation of a network
identity within the UID. Also proposed were utilising some unique
identities
in hardware - like i-buttons, or the pre-allocation of some UID ranges to
vendors - sort of similar to MAC addresses currently using flash RAM etc..
In the end we took the view that while networks were small and
private that manual management of UID's was workable and we therefore
postponed the official mechanism to see how things evolved. Probably this
still holds but very soon it is going to become an issue again. So I would
welcome the revival of the discussion and some proposals - however we need
a
champion :-) and it is a surprisingly awkward area, really only because
there are lots of solutions and you have to trade features vs complexity.
Would you feel like stepping up to the mark on this one ?? This group would
form the basis of the discussion.
Additionally a few people, Patrick I think particularly, are using
some configuration xAP messages to allow setting of fundamental xAP
configuration data (source addresses, heartbeat interval and UID). We could
do with formalising the Schemas here so we have some communality - and this
would then put in place a layer for higher level policy that is needed for
the configuration / discovery issues.
I run about a dozen xAPp instances here and the network sees around
100 different UID's ( I use sub addressing for the C-Bus stuff which
generates a unique UID per switched load ). I haven't experienced any
difficulties with UID - except hubs without one and the occasional
DEADBEEF's ;-). Indeed having conflicting UID's doesn't break the network (
a design strength) however it makes abbreviated source recognition , and
cache applications fail - so it shouldn't be allowed.

Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: silvan4you [mailto:<a
href="/group/xAP_developer/post?postID=S85IqftuJWH6c_5PxPxtVNsmGWhf71rlNqmwy7tPvuhRqH7A8hSQDMl6NXFzxtSSgc4Le5-ZfMo">silvan@b...</a>]
> Sent: 12 August 2003 10:32
> To: <a
href="/group/xAP_developer/post?postID=-b8lzIhyMOvqFUGyjms-qQOB3sxb2KowX5bL-Bi3cHYGTYMLYNunSATAuuHCGqBeV6RCjCpy0-_lhl_7R_qlM2wIaw">xAP_developer@xxxxxxx</a>
> Subject: [xAP_developer] xAP configuration protocol
>
> has anyone of you thought about some kind of configuration prototcol
> for xAP devices? i thinking about something that you don't have to
> preconfigure UID etc before you connect a device to the network
> (Ethernet or RS485 or whatever). it would be ideal if a factory new
> device has some kind of standard address (or is is in a predefined
> default address range) and that you could change the address over a
> defined xAP prototcol.
>
> i'm also thinking further about a protocol that allows you to change
> the configuration of an xAP device (not only UID but also other
> parameters).
>
> has someone did some work on such definitions already?
>
> regards,
> silvan
>
>
>
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