AEP Fullform

AEP stands for AppleTalk Echo Protocol is a transport layer protocol used for testing and verifying the status of the AppleTalk internet. This protocol is responsible to check whether a destination node is available to commence the communication session. The Echoer socket used to implement this socket listens for the received packets via this socket. This socket examines the Datagram Delivery Protocol(DDP) and its data length to determine whether it is an AEP packet or not. The availability of the destination node can be tested when it returns an echoed datagram to the source node in response.

Features :

• Echoer socket(socket number 4) is used to implement this protocol in each node.
• It measures the timing of round-trip cycles.
• It is an echo or ping-type protocol.
• It uses echo function value=1 for echo request and value=2 for echo response.
• AEP packets have a maximum data size of 585 bytes.

Advantages :

• AEP data part of the Echo Request packet can be set to any pattern by the client and then the data present in the Echo-Reply packet is inspected.
• The client can use this protocol to detect whether a node is available on the network on not.
• It provides echo services to its hosts.
• It provides network maintenance and connectivity functions.
• It performs network performance assessments.

Disadvantages :

• There is no existence of the Application Program Interface(API).
• The internet address of the node from which an echo is required should be known to the client before the commencement of this protocol.