num_answers_to_alive

[Alexander Clouter]

Stefan Winter <stefan.winter at restena.lu> wrote:
> 
> The documentation says that 3..10 are *useful* ranges, but doesn't
> mention that everything else is forbidden. In particular, I would like
> to use 1, not 3. The idea is: the server was dead before, but now it
> managed to send a reply back - so it must have been fixed. I would like
> to mark it alive immediately. Is that unreasonable?
>
Similar to 'link flapping' (think OSPF/BGP), you should use heuristics 
as things are not just black and white.  If a service simply had two 
states "up" and "down" then that probably would be okay, but we also 
have 'unstable'.  Imagine this state coming from:
 * overloaded RADIUS server (or backend DB)
 * link congestion between RADIUS servers

Having a value of three, says not just "alive" but also "alive and has 
been for a while"; this could be further interpreted that the service is 
stable as well as alive.  If the system briefly came back and died then 
on attempt two or three you would have likely seen a failure.

Hope I am explaining myself well :)

Cheers

-- 
Alexander Clouter
.sigmonster says: BOFH excuse #256:
                  You need to install an RTFM interface.