What Is Service Advertising Protocol (SAP)?
If you've ever been stalked by someone who won't leave you alone, then you know what it's like to be stalked by SAP. It's not just one person who keeps calling you, texting you, and showing up at your door; everyone has ever had anything to do with SAP. It takes over your life. You can't escape it, even if you change your number or move to another country. SAP is an automated internetwork packet exchange (IPX) protocol for adding and removing services. System administrators and application developers mainly implement it. When you want to get the word out on your company's new technology, you want it to be heard. When you're a network service like file/print/gateway servers, and you want to do that in a way that will make people stop and listen, you need a good, old-fashioned broadcast—of your IPX services. You can go the radio route (and have everyone tune into you), or you can go with SAP. This distance-vector protocol allows network services to register data in server information tables dynamically. IPX services are then periodically broadcast across networks and subnetworks. When running a startup, you've got to keep your eye on the ball. You've got to make sure that everything runs smoothly, or else your business is going down the drain. And when it comes to keeping things running smoothly, one thing is vital: server operating systems (OS) broadcast SAP services to all IPX networks through SAP agents. Each server checks in with the network at startup, and its associated SAP agent broadcasts its availability. Then, each SAP agent applies data and service changes for server information table maintenance. Once this process is complete, each server reveals itself as "available." It lets other servers know they can continue doing their thing without worrying about other servers being offline or unavailable. However, suppose something goes wrong during a shutdown (like if a server crashes). In that case, those services are removed from the network because they're no longer available to prevent conflicting data from being transmitted across multiple servers simultaneously—which could potentially cause even more problems down the road!
Related Terms by Others
Join Our Newsletter
Get weekly news, engaging articles, and career tips-all free!
By subscribing to our newsletter, you're cool with our terms and conditions and agree to our Privacy Policy.