Subject: input ports/groups

From: Jamal Hadi Salim <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 20:47:27 -0500

Trying to catchup with reviewing the model draft.
I think it would be valuable in future revisions to post a diff
of the text files; or maybe a annotated pdf so people can see
the difference. I just finished reading section 3. Hopefully i will
finish the rest this week; would be faster to review if i could compare
against what i looked at previously.

On the topic of input and input groups. This maybe something different
from what is being discussed in other thread, if not i apologize in
advance:
I am struggling trying to understand the value of

a) ports. Are ports not reflected by metadata?
What exactly is the value of a port? Is it an index into some state
table?

b) more than one input. From a semantic view i see only one input which
brings in a packet and metadata (with one or the other missing).
It is counterintuitive to me to see multiple inputs if theres consistent
input data.
Is there anything else other than those two entities that comes into an
LFB? Maybe another input is an event?

In a mixed topological + encoded state setup i see that policies
will be such that connecting instances of LFBs to each other is mostly
sufficient to describe a packet path i.e these instances of LFBs are
bound together by the CE; the compensation for addendum data needed for
processing is carried within metadata. I dont see how multiple inputs
fit in that model.

cheers,
jamal