WCCP talk..

Tue Nov 10 15:22:10 UTC 1998

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> >My question is, what prevents a cache from seding a WCCP frame
saying,
> >"Hey, I'm alive" when it really isn't?
> 
> the application itself (layer 7) is most likely to know more about
whether
> the application is alive and working than anything else.

(see below)

> i believe WCCP is more a heartbeat mechanism - the router will age
WCCP
> 'hello' packets and expire them.  presumably if it doesn't hear one
of the
> cache engines 'check in', it'll stop forwarding traffic to it.

Actually, that is inaccurate.  For a cache to say that it is alive is
insufficient.  This is a reflection of a much more sophisticated, yet
lightweight, state being maintained in the infrastructure.

Although, this does reflect the view of L4 switch vendors and their
"accomplices" -- it is in their best interest to make WCCP look like
modified policy routing or simple state maintenance a la heartbeat. 
Seems like their FUD works. :(

James, can you comment?  I don't want to get into NDA h*ll ;)

Cheers,
Chris

- --
Christian Kuhtz <ck at adsu.bellsouth.com> -wk     ck at gnu.org -hm
Sr. Network Architect, BellSouth Corp., Advanced Data Services
NOTE: "We speak PGP: key available at well-known key servers."
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