Subject: CAP Capabilities

From: [email-masked] (Steve Mansour)
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 09:01:34 -0700

The current proposal in the CAP draft is to have CAPABILITIES returned
as part of the response to a successful connection, AUTHENTICATE, or
IDENTITY command. In Oslo, it was pointed out that these were all
transport commands and that some of the information returned was
application-level data. We are trying to keep transport and application
data separate.

Everyone generally agrees that keeping the transport and application
layers distinct is a good idea. We need some ideas on how to handle
CAPABILTIES. Some capabilities are applicable to the transport layer and
some are applicable to the application layer.

One option is to have only the transport-level commands returned as part
of the response to a successful connection, AUTHENTICATE, or IDENTITY
command. Then we would have to add an application-level command to
retrieve application-level capabilities.

What do people think of this?  Any other options to consider?

-Steve

---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 08:36:51 -0700 (PDT)

> Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 13:51:14 -0400
> From: Alexander Taler <[email-masked]>
> 
> When you issue a SENDDATA you send application level data with it. 
> The application level data returned is in response to that.  When you
> authenticate you are sending no application level data, so if you get
> some back it is unsolicited at the application layer.  
> 
> Do we want to allow the receipt of unsolicited data?

It's not unsolicited.  You sent a command.  I do not think that its
completely possible to separate the protocol commands from any
application data level interaction.  You NEED the capability
information.  And I think in ALL cases, it will be the very next thing
you NEED.

Indirectly you did send application data - the UPN as a result
of a successful authentication. Its just not done in a V[...]
component.

Lets save some round trip time for low bandwidth connections.

-Doug
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