Network Management Message Format

This section describes the Network Echo Request message pair:

1804 / 1814 Messages – Network Echo Requests

The following session handling procedures are designed for simple, reliable operation, and to provide minimum required diagnostic information. The only functional consideration is the successful establishment of communications between the Elavon authorisation system and the other participant's system via TCP/IP. Once this has been achieved, the link is deemed active and transactional data can be exchanged. There is no requirement for application-level ‘sign-on’ or ‘sign-off’ Network Management messages.

1804 Network Management Echo requests will be generated by the partner host system at a rate of 1 every 5 minutes. This is to verify the link integrity for diagnostic purposes only and will not affect the link status. These echo messages must not be sent at a frequency of more than 1 message every 5 minutes. Such messaging is optional if transactional data successfully traverses the H2H link since the previous 1804 / 1814 message exchange.

Starting from an idle state, the procedures for establishing and maintaining an authorisation session between the Elavon acquiring host system and a partner host system are as described below:

1. Establish communications. This will be initiated by the partner host system. Appendix A will detail how this is achieved.
2. When the Link is active, authorisation messages can be exchanged.
3. If no traffic is exchanged for a configurable period of time, the partner host system will generate and send an 1804 Echo Request. The Elavon acquiring host system should reply with an 1814 Response.
4. The link will be considered active while the data communications link remains connected. If this disconnects at any time, the participant system should continue periodic attempts to re-establish it (see Appendix A) as in 1 above.