How does retry mechanism work compared to restart mechanism?

Gateway, as file transfer monitor, has two different counters; a retry counter and a restart counter.

- retry counter : increments with one upon physical connection problem or connect problem; any interruption as long as the actual transfer of data did not start

- restart counter : increments when, during the actual exchange of data, an interruption occures.

Both are configured differently. The retry counter is configured in the remote, physical site, as it concerns merely the physical connection.

By default, this retry counter is infinite; even though you can set it to any number, it will start over again (or uses an alternate address) when it reaches the maximum, based upon the parameter : stop_site_on_max_retry_reached in the conffile.

By default, this parameter is set to 0, meaning that the site won''t be stopped (and thus retries are infinite).

You can say for instance in the remote, physical site: max number of retries 3 and set the parameter stop_site_on_max_retry_reached = 1 in the conffile.

However, this will "freeze" the remote, physical site, meaning that also possible next, new transfers for this site will remain in To_Begin state without that the Gateway will try to make the transfer, awaiting a manual intervention.

If you prefer, there is also the parameter: cancel_transfer_on_max_retry_reached = 1 which can be set in the conffile.

If you use both:

stop_site_on_max_retry_reached = 0
cancel_transfer_on_max_retry_reached = 1

The transfer in question will retry NN number of times (as many as you indicated in the remote, physical site definition) and upon exceeding this number, the transfer will be cancelled, without freezing the site.