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DESCRIPTION AND OPERATION
INNIS01 NETWORK INTERFACE SLAVE MODULE
I-E96-613A
2 - 3
NIS POLL
The NIS poll is a single destination message. The NIS module
uses this message type to poll the operational status of another
node.
MESSAGE FORMAT
Messages exist as frames of information. Each frame consists
of a message control field that follows an information field. The
information field contains the message data. It can consist of
multiple messages and vary in size to a maximum of 1,500
bytes. The control field contains time of origination, sequence,
source, size, circulation count, message type, destinations and
checksum.
The NIS module increments the circulation count field of all
incoming messages. When a message count field exceeds 255,
the message is discarded. This is useful in keeping retry and
spurious message traffic to a minimum. The NIS module uses
the message type to determine how to process the message.
The checksum and cyclic redundancy check (CRC) fields verify
data integrity.
MESSAGE TRANSMISSION
Any NIS module can transmit a message at any time without
regard to the activities of any other NIS module on the system.
Each NIS module can transmit and receive messages simulta-
neously. NIS module start-up/shutdown is local and requires
no interaction with other NIS modules on the INFI-NET or
Plant Loop. Each NIS module receives all incoming messages
and transmits a new stream of messages in a store and forward
fashion to the next node. When there are no messages for the
NIS module to transmit, the NIS module transmits flag charac-
ters (null packets) as the loop synchronizing condition to keep
the receivers in lock.
Data Integrity
There are two methods the NIS module uses to insure data
integrity: Retry logic and polling.
RETRY LOGIC
If, on the first message transmission, the NIS module does not
receive a positive acknowledgment or negative acknowledg-
ment from the destination node, it transmits the message
again 11 times. If after this series of retries there is still no
response, the destination node is marked off-line and the NIS
module informs the network processing module of the negative
acknowledgment message.