Configuring the Random-Wait Bound

In networks with heavy traffic or a high collision rate, communication with a DA might be affected. When collision rates are high, the sending agent must retransmit the UDP datagram. You can determine if retransmission is occurring by using snoop to monitor traffic on a network of hosts that are running slpd as an SA server and a host that is running slpd as a DA. If multiple service registration messages for the same service appear in the snoop trace from the host that is running slpd as an SA server, you might have notice collisions.

Collisions can be particularly troubling at boot time. When a DA first starts, it sends unsolicited advertisements and the SAs respond with registrations. SLP requires the SAs to wait for a random amount of time after receiving a DA advertisement before responding. The random-wait bound is uniformly distributed with a maximum value that is controlled by the net.slp.randomWaitBound. The default random-wait bound is 1000 milliseconds (1 second).