[LCP]design issues

[Mike and/or Penny Novack]

>   if message size is unlimited message
> queue will not be of much help rest i believe is perfectly scalable.
>
THAT design issue I can help you with (at least if I understand what you 
picture is the problem). Not in terribly different in principle from the 
problem of "spanned" records (data of unlimited size in a buffer queue 
where the buffer elements are of  fixed size and smaller than the 
largest records).

The message is considered "segemented". Each segment has a dedicated 
portion, say two bits, which is not considered part of the message per 
se (you can use what you want for these but logically each is one bit of 
data). One means "this segment is the head of a message" and the other 
means "this segment is the tail of a message" (it is possible for a 
message to be both if it's contained within one segment. Intermediate 
segments of a message would have both these indicators off. Assuming the 
segments are also of irregular size, there would normally be a length field.

So the message receiver knows when it has started a new message, is 
processing an intermediate segment of a message, or reached the end 
segment of the message. The messages can be larger than the queue size 
as long as the queue can hold at least one segement.

Michael