Binkp/1.1
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The previous binkp/1.0-compatible mailers could
send a message M_NUL of the type "VER mailer-version binkp/1.0".
Binkp/1.1 suggests that any mailer compatible with binkp version 1.1 and higher
will form and parse such a message
(in the format "VER mailer-version binkp/1.1") after receiving it at the other
side.
This message should have been sent up to the moment when the server and
the client exchange with password and login acknowledgement. If the
message has not been received up to the moment we can consider the
protocol version of the opposite side to be equal 1.0
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One more M_NUL message, which one should understand as far as possible is M_NUL "OPT XXX YYY ...". It is a way to send
arbitrary options (the list of option names is case sensitive and delimited by spaces). Binkd/0.9 understands "NR" option: a request to
change to NR mode (an example of the request: M_NUL "OPT NR"). Generally speaking we cannot be sure that the remote side
will comply with our request after we have sent such a command and in general we have no way to know its decision (except we
stipulate especially for necessity to send back a reply for the XXX option). In case of NR any behavior of the remote side should not
confuse us (see below).
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In order to have a possibility to receive requests (in particular file
requests) and to send the results back during the same session in
case the other side runs binkp/1.1 or higher, binkd 0.9 follows such an
agreement: when both sides have exchanged with EOB the
session does not finish but it restarts by resetting binkp to the state
it had just after login (i.e. a rescan is made and sending of the
found files starts). The session is considered successfully finished, if
between two consecutive exchanges with EOF the sides did not
send and did not receive a binkp command.
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One must react correctly to M_FILE "name size time -1"
that is to reply with an appropriate M_GET (see below).
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Previously binkd always started to send every new file from the offset 0. The
other side could make a new request for the file with another offset, if it had
found a partially received file in its inbound directory. The problem is that
such an optimization makes a link absolutely unable to work if timeouts are
frequent: at the moment, when the sender gets M_GET its buffer and TCP window
are already overfilled with the data of the same file being sent from 0 and
they do not have time to free for the data from a new offset before the
connection fails. Now the senders have an option at unreliable links only
(since such a behavior is nevertheless really ineffective) to request really
necessary to the receiver offset in the transmitted file using
M_FILE "name size time -1" before sending every new file.
No preliminary agreement with the opposite side is necessary before sending
the command (besides the confidence that the remote side has binkp version
> 1.0).
I call it "NR mode" (i.e. "Not Reliable link"). Thus
we can at any moment switch to the NR mode on our own or we can at any
moment ask the remote side to switch to the NR mode by M_NUL "OPT
NR" command.
© Copyright 1997
by Dima Maloff
$Id: binkp11.html,v 1.4 1998/10/08 07:32:21 maloff Exp $
Translated from Russian by Michael Dukelsky