Connectivity Services is a network messaging service that runs over TCP/IP and can be used by any MCP application through the MCP Sockets Service API. The services are invoked using socket options. The following Connectivity Services features provide host access control capabilities to MCP client and server applications.
Authentication Service
The optional authentication service enables MCP server applications to validate access from a client. Additionally, the authentication service enables MCP client applications to provide access credentials when connecting to a server. NTLMv2 is the only supported authentication method.
Server applications can request one of the following authentication options:
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No Authentication
This option indicates the server application does not expect credentials and the client cannot attempt to provide credentials.
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Required
This option indicates that the client must supply credentials to access the server. If credentials are not supplied, the underlying connection is aborted.
Client applications can indicate that authentication is not required for access to the server; they can also provide access credentials from a credentials file if required. For a description of credentials, the MAKECREDENTIALS Utility, and the credentials files, see NXSERVICES CREDENTIALS Files.
SockLib_Initialize_Task_Identity
Once a socket connection using Connectivity Services is authenticated and the MCP user credentials (usercode) is identified, the SockLib_Initialize_Task_Identity function can be called. The SockLib_Initialize_Task_Identity function assigns the process owning the socket the identified usercode and all associated access rights. Client access rights are defined by the USERDATAFILE entries of the system for the supplied credentials. Similarly, the application access rights of an MCP client to another host are defined by the credentials of the host being accessed.
Data Encryption
Data encryption is available as an underlying service for TCP/IP (for example, SSL/TLS) and is established by the underlying transport before the authentication or messaging services are established.
For more information about using and enabling authentication services within Connectivity Services, see the MCP Sockets Service Programming Guide.
