IPP Mail Archive: IPP> FW: SLP Interoperability Test Results

IPP> FW: SLP Interoperability Test Results

From: McDonald, Ira (imcdonald@sharplabs.com)
Date: Sun Mar 12 2000 - 19:00:02 EST

  • Next message: Internet-Drafts@ietf.org: "IPP> I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-ipp-indp-method-00.txt"

    FYI,

    Results of SLP (Service Location Protocol) public
    interoperability tests in recent years - excellent
    brief summary of features that interoperate AND
    features that don't included.

    Cheers,
    - Ira McDonald (consulting architect at Sharp Labs America)
      High North

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Erik Guttman [mailto:Erik.Guttman@germany.sun.com]
    Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 6:09 AM
    To: Kashaf Khan
    Cc: Erik.Guttman@Sun.COM; srvloc@srvloc.org
    Subject: Re: SLP Interoperability Test

    > Kashaf Khan wrote:
    >
    > Hi,
    > Are the results of the test public?
    >
    > kashaf khan
    > BT Laboratories
    > kkhan@jungle.bt.co.uk

    We've had 4 interoperability tests:

    Oct 1996 (Palo Alto, CA)

       Sun, ENST Paris, IBM, Linux
    DA x x
    SA x x x x
    UA x x x x

    Dec 1996 (Palo Alto, CA)

       Sun, Novell, Linux
    DA x x x
    SA x x x
    UA x x x

    Jun 1997 (Menlo Park, CA)

       Sun, Novell, Linux, Cisco
    DA x x x
    SA x x x x
    UA x x x x

    Mar 1998 ('El Nino' Connectathon)

       Sun, Axis, IBM
    DA x
    SA x x x
    UA x x

    In each case we got the following features
    working for all implementations:

    1 DA discover (active & passive)
    2 Register with DAs (if they have the right scope)
    3 Query DAs when present (if they have the right scope)
    4 SAs respond to service requests (depending on type,
       scope, language and query)
    5 DAs respond to service requests correctly, as above
    6 Previous responders lists work correctly

    We have had limited interoperability for the following other
    features:

    SLPv1 (Novell and Sun interoperate):
    1 Attribute requests (all features)
    2 Service Type requests (all features)

    SLPv2 (Axis and Sun interoperate):
    1 Attribute requests, with & without tag lists, by service
       instance & service type

    The following features of SLPv1 were never fully interoperable:
    1 Character encodings other than ASCII
    2 Unscoped DA behavior
    3 Use of the 'fresh' bit for reregistration in SLPv1

    Other features requiring interoperability testing:
    1 SLP authentication
    2 SLP extensions
    3 Incremental registration with SLPv2 (using the fresh bit)
    4 Consistent operation using DHCP for SLP configuration

    Features various implementors would like to see dropped from
    SLPv2 for moving forward to proposed standard:

    1 Simplify query handling requirements
       - drop wildcards in queries
       - drop typed attributes (support only string types)
       - drop support for arbitrary LDAPv3 search filters:
         Handle only conjunctions (&(a=b)(c=d)(e=f)) or just (a=b)
         Especially: Drop support for '!' (not operator).

    2 Drop attribute request 'by type'

    More interoperability testing is needed, since there are many
    more vendors with SLP supporting products than have participated
    in testing and several 'resesarch' implementations which have
    been developed at Universities. Moving to draft standard will
    require more extensive and formalized interoperability testing.

    Erik



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 12 2000 - 19:06:14 EST