This document describes the Ultrix implementation of the msnl management architecture proposed in [1]. Elsewhere in this document collection the design of the MSNL control architecture and the implementation of the Unix based MSNL master is described. This document describes how the Unix MSNL master is structured internally, and how it should be used. This is not an architectural document - it serves to document the expected behavior of the MSNL master and the environment required to run it.
The MSNL master is a user space daemon which runs on an Ultrix 4.3 kernel or on OSF/1 (still under development), which has compiled into it the latest release of the MSNL user plane and socket code written by Richard Black. The MSNL master is responsible for all msnl management and control plane functions for the host on which it is supported. Internally the MSNL master is structured in such a way as to permit it to perform msnl connection management for more than 1 entity. Here an entity is taken to mean a Unix host or a wanda kernel which wishes to use msnl. The internal structure is imperfect, but largely follows the design principles described in [1]. The current version is based on an initial, experimental implementation which uses msrpc to describe a protocol used internally within the manager. This protocol is, in fact, the signalling protocol described in [1]. The use of msrpc to describe the protocol has made porting the manager somewhat awkward, because the msrpc tools are not available on all platforms and because msrpc has been superseded by msrpc2. The Unix MSNL manager should thus be rewritten in a cleaner way.
It is intended to port/rewrite the manager for wanda. When this is done, it will be possible to use the signalling protocol, currently used internally in the manager, as a generic signalling protocol for MSNL.