Note 1: The message is presented to the destination host with an 1822L leader containing the 1822L addresses of the source and destination hosts. If either address cannot be encoded as an 1822L address, then the message is not delivered and and error message is sent to the source host.
Note 2: The message is presented to the destination host with an 1822 leader containing the 1822 address of the source host.
Figure 4. Communications between different host types
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2.3 Uncontrolled Messages
Uncontrolled messages (see 1822(3.6)) present a unique problem
for the 1822L protocol. Uncontrolled messages use none of the
normal ordering and error-control mechanisms in the IMP, and do
not use the normal subnetwork connection facilities. As a
result, uncontrolled messages need to carry all of their overhead
with them, including source and destination addresses. If 1822L
addresses are used when sending an uncontrolled message,
additional information is now required by the subnetwork when the
message is transferred to the destination IMP. This means that
less host-to-host data can be contained in the message than is
possible between 1822 hosts.
Uncontrolled messages that are sent between 1822 hosts may
contain not more than 991 bits of data. Uncontrolled messages
that are sent to and/or from 1822L hosts are limited to 32 bits
less, or not more than 959 bits. Messages that exceed this
length will result in an error indication to the host, and the
message will not be sent. This error indication represents an
enhancement to the previous level of service provided by the IMP,
which would simply discard an overly long uncontrolled message
without notification.
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Other enhancements that are provided for uncontrolled message
service are a notification to the host of any message-related
errors that are detected by the host's IMP when it receives the
message. A host will be notified if an uncontrolled message
contains an error in the 1822L name specification, such as the
name not being authorized or effective, or if the remote host is
unreachable (which is indicated by none of its names being
effective), or if network congestion control throttled the
message before it left the source IMP. The host will not be
notified if the uncontrolled message was lost for some reason
once it was transmitted by the source IMP.
2.4 The Short-Blocking Feature
The short-blocking feature of the 1822 and 1822L protocols is
designed to allow a host to present messages to the IMP without
causing the IMP to not accept further messages from the host for
long amounts of time (up to 15 seconds). It is a replacement for
the non-blocking host interface described in 1822(3.7), and that
description should be ignored.
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2.4.1 Host Blocking
Most commonly, when a source host submits a message to an IMP,
the IMP immediately processes that message and sends it on its
way to its destination host. Sometimes, however, the IMP is not
able to process the message immediately. Processing a message
requires a significant number of resources, and when the network
is heavily loaded, there can sometimes be a long delay before the
necessary resources become available. In such cases, the IMP
must make a decision as to what to do while it is attempting to
gather the resources.
One possibility is for the IMP to stop accepting messages from
the source host until it has gathered the resources needed to
process the message just submitted. This strategy is known as
blocking the host, and is basically the strategy that has been
used in the ARPANET up to the present. When a host submits a
message to an IMP, all further transmissions from that host to
that IMP are blocked until the message can be processed.
It is important to note, however, that not all messages require
the same set of resources in order to be processed by the IMP.
The particular set of resources needed will depend on the message
type, the message length, and the destination host of the message
(see below). Therefore, although it might take a long time to
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gather the resources needed to process some particular message,
it might take only a short time to gather the resources needed to
process some other message. This fact exposes a significant
disadvantage in the strategy of blocking the host. A host which
is blocked may have many other messages to submit which, if only
they could be submitted, could be processed immediately. It is
"unfair" for the IMP to refuse to accept these message until it
has gathered the resources for some other, unrelated message.
Why should messages for which the IMP has plenty of resources be
delayed for an arbitrarily long amount of time just because the
IMP lacks the resources needed for some other message?
A simple way to alleviate the problem would be to place a limit
on the amount of time during which a host can be blocked. This
amount of time should be long enough so that, in most
circumstances, the IMP will be able to gather the resources
needed to process the message within the given time period. If,
however, the resources cannot be gathered in this period of time,
the IMP will flush the message, sending a reply to the source
host indicating that the message was not processed, and
specifying the reason that it could not be processed. However,
the resource gathering process would continue. The intention is
that the host resubmit the message in a short time, when,
hopefully, the resource gathering process has concluded
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successfully. In the meantime, the host can submit other
messages, which may be processed sooner. This strategy does not
eliminate the phenomenon of host blocking, but only limits the
time during which a host is blocked. This shorter time limit
will generally fall somewhere in the range of 100 milliseconds to
2 seconds, with its value possibly depending on the reason for
the blocking.
Note, however, that there is a disadvantage to having short
blocking times. Let us say that the IMP accepts a message if it
has all the resources needed to process it. The ARPANET provides
a sequential delivery service, whereby messages with the same
priority, source host, and destination host are delivered to the
destination host in the same order as they are accepted from the
source host. With short blocking times, however, the order in
which the IMP accepts messages from the source host need not be
the same as the order in which the source host originally
submitted the messages. Since the two data streams (one in each
direction) between the host and the IMP are not synchronized, the
host may not receive the reply to a rejected message before it
submits subsequent messages of the same priority for the same
destination host. If a subsequent message is accepted, the order
of acceptance differs from the order of original submission, and
the ARPANET will not provide the same type of sequential delivery
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that it has in the past.
Up to now, type 0 (regular) messages have only had sub-types
available to request the standard blocking timeout. The short-
blocking feature makes available new sub-types that allow the
host to request messages to be short-blocking, i.e. only cause
the host to be blocked for a short amount of time if the message
cannot be immediately processed. See section 3.1 for a complete
list of the available sub-types.
If sequential delivery by the subnet is a strict requirement, as
would be the case for messages produced by NCP, the short-
blocking feature cannot be used. For messages produced by TCP,
however, the use of the short-blocking feature is allowed and
recommended.
2.4.2 Reasons for Host Blockage
There are a number of reasons why a message could cause a long
blockage in the IMP, which would result in the rejection of a
short-blocking message. The IMP signals this rejection of a
short-blocking message by using the Incomplete Transmission (Type
9) message, using the sub-type field to indicate which of the
above reasons caused the rejection of the message. See section
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3.2 for a summary of the Incomplete Transmission message and a
complete list of its sub-types. The sub-types that apply to the
short-blocking feature are:
6. Connection setup-delay: Although the IMP presents a simple
message-at-a-time interface to the host, it provides an