i130 - what does ack interval refer to

[Doug Davis <dug@us.ibm.com>]

All,
  Doug Bunting and I have been
discussing issue 130 ("what does ack interval refer to")
and we've hit a bit of a roadblock.
 There are two (perhaps more) ways of interpretting
what the AckInterval (AI) value is meant
to be used for, or what its intended meaning is supposed
to be.  The two, most likely, options
are:
1 - the maximum time the RMD will wait,
after receipt of a message, before an Ack will be sent
2 - the maximum time the RMD will wait
before between sending Acks

Option 1 means that the RMD will wait
no longer than the AI value before it sends an Ack. The
RMS can be assured that if it doesn't
get an Ack from the RMD after that time then the Ack
was lost.  Note: a new msg into
the RMD initiates the timer and the sending of an Ack stops it.

Option 2 means that the RMD will send
out an acknowledgement, at least, every AI milliseconds.
Sort of like a heartbeat.  The
RMS can be assured that it will not need to wait any longer than the
AI before an Ack will be resent.  Note:
the sending of an Ack will reset the timer and it will only stop
upon termination of the sequence.

Note: in both options the RMD is always
free to send more acks and the RMS is always free to
send an AckReq - but we're not worried
about those situations.

The current wording is a bit ambiguous.So,
the question for the TC is....which option do we 
want to present in the spec?  Thoughts?

thanks,
-DougD