Living with the Chaos protocol

[delaney@xn.ll.mit.edu]

According to Symbolics's documentation and to messages posted to the
SLUG list in the past, the answer is yes. You have to set up the
namespace to provide the NAMESPACE and NAMESPACE-TIMESTAMP services
via TCP and UDP [off the top of my head here] and remove all service
entries which rely on CHAOS (or CHAOS-SIMPLE). A few features of the
OS, like Show Hosts, may then not work because there is no
corresponding TCP-based service. Copy Worlds may be one of the
features you lose, but of that I am uncertain. Never experimented with
that or heard of anyone who has.

Having half-answered your question, I have to ask why your corporate
people are against CHOAS traffic? the questions is partially
rhetorical. We did have problems here when we has SUNs and Symbolic
machines on the same subnet. We long suspected a pathological
interaction between the two related to CHAOS traffic. We never proved
the point one way of the other but it did go away when we put the
LISP Machines on their own subnet (for traffic reasons, not because of
the problems) with a router that does not forward CHAOS packets.

My recommendation would be for you folks to do what we did. Get a
Cisco router box (if you don't already have one). Hang a new subnet
off of it for the LISP machines only. set the router to forward TCP
traffic only. The costs are not large, maximum traffic on any one
subnet is reduced, and you can still use CHOAS among the LISP
machines.

John