eap Mailing List: RE: [Issue 203] Comments on EAP-Peer state machine

[Joseph Salowey (jsalowey]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Petroni [mailto:npetroni [at] cs.umd.edu] 
> Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2003 2:32 AM
> To: Joseph Salowey
> Cc: eap [at] frascone.com
> Subject: RE: [eap] [Issue 203] Comments on EAP-Peer state machine
> 
> 
> Thanks for the comments Joe.  I have some comments as well.
> 
> > [Joe] Int check should be internal to the method.  It should be 
> > possible
> intCheck IS set by an internal method, m.integrityCheck().
> 
> > for the method to signal that a packet should be ignored.  I think 
> > breaking it out like this is misleading.
> [npetroni] I would say it IS possible for the method to 
> signal that a packet should be ignored just by setting 
> intCheck. Perhaps it's the name you just don't like? I don't 
> see how this is any different from how it works now.
> 
> > > [npetroni] This is meant to show that a method really has its own 
> > > state machine and that these states are separate from the final 
> > > decision. I think it provides nice way of separating the 
> two, but I 
> > > am willing to discuss this alternative notation.
> > >
> > [Joe] I agree that a method has its own state machine, 
> however I think 
> > exposing it here creates some problems.  First it 
> complicates the EAP
> [npetroni] This is not exposing the ACTUAL method state 
> machine (IMHO), just a minimal set of signals that need to be 
> exported. There could be more.
> 
[Joe] I guess what I am really compaining about is that there seems to
be an overabundance of signals, some of which seem to be internal to the
method.  I would like to see the minimal set of signals used between the
method and the EAP state machine.  Perhaps we already have the minimal
set of signals, but there seems to be a lot (1 boolean and two
tri-states).  I think this can be simplified to 4 different signals from
the method, IGNORE, COND_SUCCESS, SUCCESS, FAILURE.   However the
machine is sufficiently complex that I could be missing something.