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Passive dCap

Tigran Mkrtchyan

Patrick Fuhrmann

The dCap protocol, similiar to FTP, uses a control channel to request a transfer which is subsequently done through data channels. Per default, the data channel is initiated by the server, connecting to an open port in the client library. This is commonly known as active transfer. Starting with dCache 1.7.0 the dCap protocol supports passive transfer mode as well, which consequently means that the client connects to the server pool to initiate the data channel. This is essential to support dCap clients running behind firewalls and within private networks.

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Preparing the server for dCap passive transfer

The port(s), the server pools should listens on, can be specified by the org.dcache.net.tcp.portrange variable, as part of the ’java_options’ directive in the config/dCacheSetup configuration file. A range has to be given if pools are split amoung multiple JVMs. E.g:

java_options="-server ... -Dorg.dcache.dcap.port=0 -Dorg.dcache.net.tcp.portrange=33115:33145"

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Switching the dCap library resp. dccp to PASSIVE

Note

The commonly used expression ’passive’ is seen from the server perspective and actually means ’server passive’. From the client perspective this is of course ’active’. Both means that the client connects to the server to establish the data connection. This mode is supported by the server starting with 1.7.0 and dccp with 1-2-40 (included in 1.7.0)

The following dCap API call switches all subsequent dc_open calls to server-passive mode if this mode is supported by the corresponding door. (dCache Version >= 1.7.0).

void dc_setClientActive()

The environment variable DCACHE_CLIENT_ACTIVE switches the dCap library to server-passive. This is true for dCap, dCap preload and dccp.

dccp switches to server-passive when issuing the -A command line option.