Re: draft-ietf-ldapext-ldap-c-api-03 & timeout

[Fan Jiao <fjiao@cisco.com>]

Mark,

See inlines.

Mark Wahl wrote:

> Do you mean as part of the ldap_result() call and the synchronous Bind calls
> (e.g. ldap_sasl_bind_s), or as a control transmitted over protocol with the
> requset?

At least the former - may be both.

>
>
> Also, I am not familiar with the term 'exponential timeout'; could you provide
> an example, please?

A simple timeout has the same timeout intervals. For example, one might have
Retry=3, Timeout=3. Then if client fails to connect to Directory, it will wait for

3 secs and try again and so forth. The drawback is that the odds for a client to
get
connected to server is not usually very good in a congested network.

Exponential timeout uses different timeout intervals which are calculated by an
exponential function. One would define it using integers, Seed,
Limit, and Retry. For example, S=3, L=60, R=3, a client would wait for 3 secs
to try to connect first. If it fails, it would wait for say 12 secs, then may be
56 secs.
One would also define the meaning of Retry = 0 - try as many time as it can as
long
as calculated interval doesn't exceed the Limit.

By using such timeout mechanism with ldap bind/ldap result API, some higher level
APIs which are easy-to-use can be easily designed, for example.

>
>
> Mark Wahl, Directory Product Architect
> Innosoft International, Inc.