On 13 Feb 2006, at 19:05, R. P. Channing [Rick] Rodgers wrote: >> From: "Ivan R. Judson" <jud...@mcs.anl.gov> >> Subject: RE: [AG-TECH] One-page summary of AG port usage -- please >> help us > complete it >> Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:41:32 -0600 >> >> >> I think what you're hearing is unwillingness for anyone to commit >> to a wrong >> answer. >> >> From memory, the ports for vic, rat, and the rest of the tools are >> allocated >> by the venue server. It can be a static allocation configured by the >> provider or a dynamic allocation (I think the default). > > Perhaps my understanding is faulty, but I also believe that the > default is > automated assignment by the server. But that can not be entirely > random -- > the numbers must be drawn from a range of values appearing > somewhere in the > code. Having that range in a doc. is much better than having nothing, > which is what he have now. > > A subsequent posting from Zsolt Nagykaldi makes the point, which I > emphatically > agree with, that port assignment is a crucial problem to solve if > AG is truly > going to take off. He suggests using fixed port numbers with a > registry, which > is one solution (and by "fixed" I believe he means that required > ports would > remain the same for a given venue over time). Another might be to > adapt or > create a protocol allowing the exchange of port numbers when > entering a venue > (which would at least tell you what ports were required, even if > they don't > happen to be open at the moment). ...
A long term solution along these lines would be to adopt SIP as part of the signalling mechanisms for AccessGrid, since many firewall/NAT devices these days are becoming SIP aware to support VoIP applications, and can snoop on the signalling to open the required ports. That's a huge job though, and not a near term solution... Colin
