Remote Procedure Call

Outline
Protocol Stack
Presentation Formatting

Spring 2002 CS 461 1

 RPC Timeline

Client Server

Blocked

Blocked Computing

Blocked

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 RCP Components
• Protocol Stack
– BLAST: fragments and reassembles large messages
– CHAN: synchronizes request and reply messages
– SELECT: dispatches request to the correct process
• Stubs
Caller Callee
(client) (server)
Return Return
Arguments Arguments
value value
Client Server
stub stub

Request Reply Request Reply

RPC RPC
protocol protocol

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 Bulk Transfer (BLAST)
Sender Receiver

• Unlike AAL and IP,

tries to recover from
lost fragments

• Strategy
– selective retransmission
– aka partial
acknowledgements

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 BLAST Details
• Sender:
– after sending all fragments, set timer DONE
– if receive SRR, send missing fragments and reset DONE
– if timer DONE expires, free fragments

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 BLAST Details (cont)
• Receiver:
– when first fragments arrives, set timer LAST_FRAG
– when all fragments present, reassemble and pass up
– four exceptional conditions:
• if last fragment arrives but message not complete
– send SRR and set timer RETRY
• if timer LAST_FRAG expires
– send SRR and set timer RETRY
• if timer RETRY expires for first or second time
– send SRR and set timer RETRY
• if timer RETRY expires a third time
– give up and free partial message

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 BLAST Header Format
0 16 31

• MID must protect against wrap around ProtNum

MID
• TYPE = DATA or SRR
Length
• NumFrags indicates number of fragments NumFrags Type
• FragMask distinguishes among fragments FragMask

– if Type=DATA, identifies this fragment Data

– if Type=SRR, identifies missing fragments

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 Request/Reply (CHAN)
• Guarantees message delivery
• Synchronizes client with server
• Supports at-most-once semantics
Simple case Implicit Acks
Client Server Client Server

…
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 CHAN Details
• Lost message (request, reply, or ACK)
– set RETRANSMIT timer
– use message id (MID) field to distinguish
• Slow (long running) server
– client periodically sends “are you alive” probe, or
– server periodically sends “I’m alive” notice
• Want to support multiple outstanding calls
– use channel id (CID) field to distinguish
• Machines crash and reboot
– use boot id (BID) field to distinguish
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 CHAN Header Format
typedef struct {
u_short Type; /* REQ, REP, ACK, PROBE */
u_short CID; /* unique channel id */
int MID; /* unique message id */
int BID; /* unique boot id */
int Length; /* length of message */
int ProtNum; /* high-level protocol */
} ChanHdr;

typedef struct {
u_char type; /* CLIENT or SERVER */
u_char status; /* BUSY or IDLE */
int retries; /* number of retries */
int timeout; /* timeout value */
XkReturn ret_val; /* return value */
Msg *request; /* request message */
Msg *reply; /* reply message */
Semaphore reply_sem; /* client semaphore */
int mid; /* message id */
int bid; /* boot id */
} ChanState;

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 Synchronous vs Asynchronous
Protocols
• Asynchronous interface
send(Protocol llp, Msg *message)
deliver(Protocol llp, Msg *message)

• Synchronous interface
call(Protocol llp, Msg *request, Msg *reply)
upcall(Protocol hlp, Msg *request, Msg *reply)

• CHAN is a hybrid protocol

– synchronous from above: call
– asynchronous from below: deliver

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 Dispatcher (SELECT)
• Dispatch to appropriate Caller
Client
Callee
Server

procedure call upcall

• Synchronous SELECT SELECT

counterpart to UDP call upcall

• Implement concurrency CHAN CHAN

(open multiple CHANs) send deliver send deliver

• Address Space for Procedures

– flat: unique id for each possible procedure
– hierarchical: program + procedure number

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 Simple RPC Stack
SELECT

CHAN

BLAST

IP

ETH

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 SunRPC
• IP implements BLAST-equivalent SunRPC

– except no selective retransmit

UDP

• SunRPC implements CHAN-equivalent

– except not at-most-once IP

ETH

• UDP + SunRPC implement SELECT-equivalent

– UDP dispatches to program (ports bound to programs)
– SunRPC dispatches to procedure within program

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 SunRPC Header Format
• XID (transaction id) is 0
XID
31 0
XID
31

similar to CHAN’s MID MsgType = CALL MsgType = REPLY

• Server does not remember RPCVersion = 2 Status = ACCEPTED

last XID it serviced Program Data

• Problem if client Version

retransmits request while Procedure

reply is in transit Credentials (variable)

Verifier (variable)

Data

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 Presentation Formatting
• Marshalling (encoding)
application data into Application Application
messages data data

• Unmarshalling
(decoding) messages Presentation
encoding
Presentation
decoding
into application data
…
Message Message Message

• Data types we consider • Types of data we do not consider

– integers – images
– floats – video
– strings
– multimedia documents
– arrays
– structs

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 Difficulties
• Representation of base types
– floating point: IEEE 754 versus non-standard
– integer: big-endian versus little-endian (e.g., 34,677,374)
(2) (17) (34) (126)
Big-endian 00000010 00010001 00100010 01111110

(126) (34) (17) (2)

Little-endian 01111110 00100010 00010001 00000010

High Low
address address
• Compiler layout of structures

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 Taxonomy
• Data types
– base types (e.g., ints, floats); must convert
– flat types (e.g., structures, arrays); must pack
– complex types (e.g., pointers); must linearize
Application data structure

Marshaller

• Conversion Strategy
– canonical intermediate form
– receiver-makes-right (an N x N solution)
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 Taxonomy (cont)
• Tagged versus untagged data
type = len = 4 value = 417892
INT

• Stubs Interface
descriptor for
– compiled Call P Procedure P P
– interpreted
Arguments Specification Arguments

Client Code Stub Code Server

stub compiler stub
Marshalled Marshalled
arguments arguments

RPC RPC

Message

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 eXternal Data Representation
(XDR)
• Defined by Sun for use with SunRPC
• C type system (without function pointers)
• Canonical intermediate form
• Untagged (except array length)
• Compiled stubs

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#define MAXNAME 256;
#define MAXLIST 100;

struct item {
int count;
char name[MAXNAME];
int list[MAXLIST];
};

bool_t
xdr_item(XDR *xdrs, struct item *ptr)
{
return(xdr_int(xdrs, &ptr->count) &&
xdr_string(xdrs, &ptr->name, MAXNAME) &&
xdr_array(xdrs, &ptr->list, &ptr->count,
MAXLIST, sizeof(int), xdr_int));
}

Count Name
3 7 J O H N S O N

List
3 4 97 8 321 2 65

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 Abstract Syntax Notation One
(ASN-1)
• An ISO standard
• Essentially the C type system
• Canonical intermediate form
• Tagged
• Compiled or interpretted stubs
• BER: Basic Encoding Rules
(tag, length, value)

type length type length value type length value

value

INT 4 4-byte integer

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 Network Data Representation
(NDR)
• Defined by DCE – IntegerRep
• 0 = big-endian
• Essentially the C type system • 1 = little-endian
• Receiver-makes-right – CharRep
(architecture tag) • 0 = ASCII
• 1 = EBCDIC
• Individual data items untagged – FloatRep
• Compiled stubs from IDL • 0 = IEEE 754
• 1 = VAX
• 4-byte architecture tag • 2 = Cray
• 3 = IBM

0 4 8 16 24 31
IntegrRep CharRep FloatRep Extension 1 Extension 2

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