Protocols

When computers communicate with one another, a set of rules, known as a protocol, is used to transmit and receive data in an orderly fashion. Protocols are the meaning and sequencing rules for requests and responses used for managing a network, transferring data, and synchronizing the states of network components.

Most protocols are similar in their configuration elements:

  • Several protocols contain the Auto-Reconnect and Reopen Time options.

    Auto-Reconnect specifies if the connection to the host should reopen if it goes down. Select this to specify the reopen time between retries to open the connection to the host.

  • All protocols contain Start-Up Procs.

    This specifies the names of Tcl procedures to run when the thread starts. This is a Tcl Procedure Stream (TPS).

    When a thread starts, the startup TPS runs in Startup mode. There is no message passed into it. Thereafter, access to this TPS is controlled by the Protocol Startup Switch.

Length-encoding

The TCP/IP protocol uses length-encoding. Message length-encoding provides a way to determine message boundaries, letting the driver know how many characters are in the message. After the driver decodes a string, it reads exactly that many subsequent characters and processes them as a message.

Advanced scheduling

Advanced Scheduling uses the Network Configurator to specify schedules in terms of absolute dates and time, instead of offset seconds. This includes Fileset Local, Fileset FTP, HTTP Client, and UPoC .