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16.3 DCE-CIOP Message Transport

   DCE-CIOP defines two DCE-RPC interfaces for the transport of messages between client ORBs and server ORBs3. One interface uses pipes to convey the messages, while the other uses conformant arrays.

   The pipe-based interface is the preferred interface, since it allows messages to be transmitted without precomputing the message length. But not all DCE-RPC implementations adequately support pipes, so this interface is optional. All client and server ORBs implementing DCE-CIOP must support the array-based interface4.

   While server ORBs may provide both interfaces or just the array-based interface, it is up to the client ORB to decide which to use for an invocation. If a client ORB tries to use the pipe-based interface and receives an rpc_s_unknown_if error, it should fall back to the array-based interface.