Delivery-Date: Thu Oct  9 16:15:32 2008
Message-Id: <200810092322.m99NM84S014645@bourbon.usc.edu>
To: cs551@merlot.usc.edu
Subject: Re: CS551 - Final1
Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:22:08 -0700
From: Bill Cheng <william@bourbon.usc.edu>

Someone wrote:

  > I have a question about connecting to neighbor nodes. Suppose we
  > have 4 beacon nodes A,B,C and D which are fully connected. Then a
  > non beacon node is started and connects to node A and sends a
  > join request to it, A forwards the messages to B, C and D and
  > sends a response to the non beacon node. B, C and D will also
  > send a join response through A to the non beacon node.

So far so good!

  > Will these
  > four responses be considered potential neighbors by the non
  > beacon node since non beacon nodes need to be connected to a
  > single beacon node but in this senario, there are 4 join
  > responses but no non beacon node responses. Or do we have to
  > search through join responses to remove beacon node responses
  > before sorting and selecting neighbors to initiate connections
  > to.

Now you've lost me!  If you look at the example given in
slides 7 through 11 of lecture 9, it is the case you are
talking about.  The 4 responses are just response messages.
I don't know why you say that "these four responses be
considered potential neighbors".  All nodes in the network
are considered potential neighbors, including beacon nodes.

After the regular nodes received all the join responses, it
sorts them and keep the winners (how many to keep depends on
the InitNeighbors value in its startup configuration file).
The winners become its init-neighbors.  Then it disconnects
from the beacon node and does a soft restart.

In the example on page 11, the regular node picks two beacon
nodes are its init-neighbors.  On page 12, it connects to
these two neighbors and exchange hello messages.  At this
point, this regular node becomes part of the SERVANT network.
--
Bill Cheng // bill.cheng@usc.edu <URL:http://merlot.usc.edu/william/usc/>