NIO CommKit Host Interface Installation and System Administration Manual

4-3
Administering the CommKit Software and the STREAMS Listener
Why Two Servers?
Why Two Servers?
The NIO CommKit Host Interface supports two types of servers—a
CommKit server and a Transport Level Interface (TLI) listener server. Each
server requires its own type of client application. The CommKit server
requires a client application written in the CommKit library functions. The
listener server requires a network-independent client.
The CommKit Server
The CommKit server has knowledge of the CommKit software and the data
switch dialstrings. The CommKit server is tightly coupled to the CommKit
drivers and calls the raw driver directly.
The CommKit server waits for an incoming request having the dialstring
format host.service, where service is the service to be called. The CommKit
server assumes its client application is written using the CommKit library
libdk. The CommKit client must call the dkdial() function to specify the
name of the host the client wants to communicate with and the service it
wants to invoke.
The Listener
The listener server is network-independent and completely unaware of
CommKit details. The listener uses CommKit modules to provide network
services and transport services. The network service module strips the data
switch dialstring (host.service) from the incoming stream. The listener waits
for an NLPS string like the following:
NLPS:000:002:service
where service is the name of the service to be invoked.