🚀 go-pugleaf

crj10@phx.cam.ac.uk (Clive Jones) writes:

>In article <marlow.717842425@radon.sys.uea.ac.uk> marlow@sys.uea.ac.uk (K. Marlow PG) writes:
>>  I just want to ask those in the known, is the timeout for an econet
>>transmit an absolute stop point or just a point at which it says the
>>transmission has failed? Say if I had my timeout set to 1 second and a repeat
>>[...]

>OK. The PRMs are NOT at all clear on network behavior.
  Ah, I'm glad someone else noticed.  :-)

[...]

>If two people try transmitting at once, then one or both scout frames
>will be lost, and one or both machines will perform a random back-off.
>If the scout frame gets through, the transmission is then allowed to
>run uninterrupted to completion, if the two machines negotiate
>correctly.

>The practical upshot of this is that if a transmission is marked, at a
>given instant, as failed, then no scout frame has got through. This is
>equivalent to the rest of the world to your never having tried to
>send. SO - trying to send for ten seconds is the same as trying to
>send for one second ten times in quick succession, apart from the
>small periods in which you're not trying to send.

>There is no network queue as such, as previously explained.
  Er, are you sure that there isn't a transmit queue?  What would happen if
I tried to start several transmits at once using Econet_Transmit?  or are you
saying that all the waiting transmits try to contend for the line at the
same time?

>Why do you want to do several short timeouts instead of one long one,
>though? If it's just so that you can continue processing in the
>meantime, you ought to use background operations (i.e.
>Econet_Transmit, Econet_PollTransmit, etc. rather than Econet_DoTransmit).

  I do do that via an EconetSupport module which implements a true event queue
which is read by the polling wimp application.  Handles all the rma &
control blocks.  This sits under an Econet C library which makes a connection
across econet look like a form of two way synchronous virtual link, gets rid
off the need for me to mess around with the econet specific bits in the
application code & allows me to write econet apps quite quickly.

  Also, you seem to imply that one long timeout is the same in effect as
several short timeouts, if that was the case I would thought that there
would have been only the one parameter?  There must be some difference in
effect.

>>  Also what do people reckon is a sensible length of timeout to have.. 5
>>seconds, maybe 10?

>I tend to use a timeout of 30 seconds, but let the user press Escape.
  Hmm, I suppose I'd better make the timeout & count parameters passed to my
Econet library, then my beta testers can play with the settings & see what
happens.

>--Clive.
--
 Keith Marlow,               *  Author of Archiboard BBS s/w, 
 Information Systems P/G,    * the only multiline fidonet BBS which operates
 University of East Anglia,  * across Econet.
 Norwich. Norfolk NR4 7TJ    *